I Need to Produce 1,000 Candles a Day — How Do I Calculate the Wax-Melter Capacity Required From Total Daily Wax Consumption?

Work backwards from the wax, not forwards from the machine

At this volume you should never choose a melter by looking at it and imagining the day. Choose it by writing down your daily wax consumption and dividing it into cycles your team can actually run. The calculation takes five steps and fits on one sheet. Every step uses a number you either know already or can measure in a single trial shift.

The worked example below uses 1,000 candles of 200 g at 8% fragrance load. Substitute your own fill weight, load and shift length; the method does not change.

The five-step capacity calculation

Steps one to three are arithmetic. Step four is where most capacity plans fail, because people use the melt time alone. CSI's product page states the 10 kg unit melts 10 kg of soy wax in approximately 30 minutes at 100°C, but a cycle also includes the wait while the wax comes down to the wax maker's stated fragrance-addition temperature, the mixing, the pour itself and the changeover. Those usually take far longer than the melt. No melt time is published for the 20 kg unit.

How cycles per day change the answer

Because step four has to be measured, the table shows the result across a range of possible cycles per tank per day. Find your row after your trial shift.

The spread is wide. A team that manages only two cycles per tank needs six 20 kg melters; one that runs five needs three. That difference is why step four matters more than any other number on the sheet. Suppose, purely as an assumption to illustrate, that your cycle is two hours and your shift eight: four cycles per tank, 52.6 kg per cycle, three 20 kg melters. At the listed ₹25,960.00 each, three units are ₹77,880.00 (₹25,960.00 × 3). Four 20 kg units at the same unit price would give you a spare tank for fragrance changes and a margin if one unit is being cleaned.

Running the trial shift

Use one tank and one fragrance for the trial, filled to the working level you intend to use every day. Start a clock when the wax goes in and note the time at each milestone: fully liquid, down to addition temperature on a separate thermometer, oil added, mixing finished, first candle poured, last candle poured, tank clean and ready. Run it at least twice, because the first cycle of any new routine is always slow. Take the longer of the two runs as your planning figure, not the shorter — a capacity plan built on your best cycle will fail on your ordinary days. Then divide the length of your working shift by that figure and round down, since half a cycle poured into jars at the end of the day is still a batch left unfinished.

Cross-check against your fragrance split

The table assumes every cycle can be any fragrance. In practice each fragrance is a separate batch and needs a clean tank. So run a second check. If the 1,000 candles are five fragrances of 200, each fragrance needs 42.1 kg prepared. That is three cycles of a 20 kg tank per fragrance — fifteen cycles in all — or about five tanks at three cycles each, or four tanks at four. If the same 1,000 are twenty fragrances of 50, each needs 10.5 kg, and 10 kg tanks become more sensible than 20 kg ones because a half-filled 20 kg tank still takes a full cycle.

Take the higher of the two answers — the one from total wax and the one from the fragrance split. That is your real melter count.

What else 1,000 a day demands

CSI's largest listed melter is the 20 kg unit. At 1,000 candles a day, a bank of 20 kg melters is a workable melting setup, but it is only one part of the line. Pouring 1,000 candles in an eight-hour shift is 125 candles an hour. Filling machines, wax dispensing equipment, heated pouring pots with taps, curing racks and high-capacity precision scales all become reasonable to consider at this volume, and CSI sells none of them. When you shop for them, check that temperature can be verified independently, that anything which touches scented wax can be cleaned completely between fragrances, and that capacities match one fragrance run.

Temperature, flashpoint and electrical load

A bank of melters multiplies both the fragrance and the electrical risks. The display on CSI's melter reads 60°C–100°C with a stated ±10°C deviation, so every tank needs its own thermometer reading before oil goes in. Some CSI oils have published flashpoints below 100°C — Roasted Coconut at 93°C and Gardenia at 98°C — which makes scenting at the maximum setting unsafe as well as bad for throw. Three to six melters drawing power together is a substantial sustained load: have the circuits checked by an electrician against the rating plates, give each unit a suitable socket, and never daisy-chain extension boards.

Finally, remember that the calculation describes the equipment the plan needs, not the equipment you must own on day one. If 1,000 a day is a target rather than today's demand, buy the tanks for your current row in the table, run it for a month, and add units as orders prove the need.

Plan the spare capacity deliberately as well. One tank out of action for cleaning or repair takes a fixed share of the day with it: with three tanks, a third; with six, a sixth. Decide in advance which fragrances move to the next day if a unit is down, so an equipment problem becomes a scheduling decision rather than a scramble.

Keep the calculation sheet with your batch records. When demand changes, or a new fragrance with a different load joins the range, you only need to change one input and re-run the five steps. A capacity plan that lives on paper can be checked by anyone on the team; one that lives in your head is lost the day you are away.

Where this page fits

CSI already has guides that cover parts of this question. This page takes the production-floor angle; these go deeper on the rest:

Three things to buy for this job

Frequently asked questions