I Normally Make 20 Candles a Day but a Corporate Client Wants 1,000 in One Month — What Daily Production Rate Would I Need?

The calendar-day trap, in one table

Your title gives three figures: 20 a day, 1,000 candles, one month. This page reads "one month" as 30 calendar days and assumes a 200 g candle at 8% (16 g of oil, 184 g of wax), the series default. Everything else is a labelled worked example: replace it with yours. The client in this example wants candles that have cured for a week before delivery; many makers judge hot throw at around day 7, and the 48–72 hours on Woody Oud's page is the page's wait before burn testing, not a promise of peak throw.

Both traps feel reasonable and both lead to a yes you cannot keep. The calendar trap counts Sundays and the cure week as production. The working-day trap is subtler: it removes Sundays but still assumes you can pour until the day before delivery, which means packing candles that have cured for a day. The question in the title is answered by the bold row: 62 a day.

First find out why you make 20

"20 a day" is an output, not a capacity. Before you can triple it you need to know which of three things sets it: time (you make candles for three hours, around other work), equipment (one pot, one pitcher, a shelf of racks) or method (every candle takes you a long time because of how you work). Each one needs a different fix.

The third row is the one people do not want to see. If 20 candles already take your whole day, the issue is not one machine: it is how long each candle takes. A melter shortens the melt, but wicking, pouring, labelling and boxing still take what they take. Time every station over 20 candles; the full station model is the maximum-capacity post. Melter cycle-by-cycle output is the one-melter post.

What tripling actually requires

Here is the workshop at 20 a day beside the workshop at 62 a day, station by station. The timings are a worked example (wick 1.0, pour 1.25, QC 0.5, label and box 2.0 minutes a candle, plus 60 fixed minutes a day); the method is what matters.

Two lines decide this order. Racks: a 7-day cure means a full week of production is sitting on shelves at once, about 496 candles, against perhaps 160 today. If you do not have shelf space for 500 candles kept clean, level and away from sun and fans, you do not have the capacity, whatever your melter says. With a 72-hour set it falls to about 200. Hands: in this worked example 62 a day is 5.9 hours of hands-on work, so one person working a full day can do it, but only if their minutes match these; if your timings are double, so is the staffing.

Bigger batches are also a process change. A 6 kg melt does not heat, hold or mix like a 2 kg pot, so treat your rehearsal day as a process check: weigh and burn candles from the first and last pour of a melt (the 10 kg mixing post; the bigger-melter revalidation post). The losses that only appear at scale, such as heels, spills and more rejects at speed, are the hidden-losses-at-scale post; your 3% reject history at 20 a day may not hold at 62.

The materials at 62 a day

The purchase sheet assumes your proven candle is Premium Coconut Soy Wax CSI 468 with Woody Oud at 8% and an Eco C2 wick in your own 200 g jar. If yours differs, keep the method and swap the products. Daily wax and oil kilograms on their own are the kilograms-per-day post; batch counts from a melter are the batches post.

₹210.31 a saleable candle is wax, oil and wick, buffers included; it excludes your jars, labour, packaging, freight and GST. Three pack choices are worth knowing. CSI 468 is ₹637.00 a kilo from 5 kg up and ₹650.00 in 1 kg bags, so the last 4 kg are cheaper as four 1 kg bags (₹2,600.00) than as a 5 kg bag (₹3,185.00); 194 kg costs ₹1,23,630.00, against ₹1,27,400.00 for a round 200 kg. Woody Oud is ₹4.53 a gram from 100 g to 1 kg, so buying to the nearest 100 g (₹76,577.28) saves ₹453.12 against 17 × 1 kg. Eco C2 wicks are ₹9.44 each in any pack, so 1,070 beats 1,100.

The decision, and the honest counter-offers

The settling number is 62 a day for 17 days. The decision rule: accept the month only if a rehearsal day at 62 works with the set-up you will actually use, you have racks for about 496, the candle is already proven, and the materials are confirmed. Otherwise counter-offer.

The split is worth offering when the client's real need is a launch or a festival rather than all 1,000 on one day: at 20 a day you pour 340 in 17 pouring days, about 320 saleable. Corporate gifts often go out by department; ask. What you never trade for the date: the proven formula, the burn checks on production candles, the cure you agreed, and a comparison of any new wax or oil lot before it goes in the melter. Building a deadline buffer into the promise is the spare-capacity post; running this alongside your website orders is the website-capacity post.

What to buy to triple, and what to skip

Five items, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 7 October 2026. CSI publishes no burn or throw data, so nothing is ranked on performance, and each card assumes the material is already in your proven candle.

Argued against our own interest: do not buy the melter, the 194 kg or the 16.9 kg until the rehearsal day has worked and the client has approved and paid. If your 20 a day is limited by method, a melter will not fix it; if it is limited by racks, CSI does not sell racks. And skip the 20 kgs melter: at 62 a day a 10 kg unit runs two half-loads a day, so the extra capacity costs money and sits idle.

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