Lot and Batch Traceability for Tea and Coffee Units

Traceability means you can answer two questions quickly: which sources went into this pack, and which customers received this batch. Large exporters have teams for this. A small Nepali tea or coffee unit can do the same with a numbering habit and a few records, and batch traceability software makes the habit hard to skip. Here is a simple method.

Step 1: Number the intake

Every delivery gets a number the moment it is weighed: the date, the grower or collection centre, the product, the weight and a quality remark. Write it on the sack tag or crate card as well as in the record. If the grower is paid later, this number is what the statement refers to.

Step 2: Create the processing lot

A processing lot gathers one or more intakes that will be handled together. Record which intakes feed it and the combined input weight. Give the lot a number with some meaning, such as the product code, the Bikram Sambat date and a running count. A lot should have a clear start and end so stages are not mixed with the next day's material.

Step 3: Record each stage

For each stage note the date, the operator or shift, the weight in and the weight out. The difference is wastage, and a pattern of high wastage in one stage tells you where to look. For coffee, this might be cherry to parchment and parchment to green bean. For tea, it might be green leaf to withered leaf and then to made tea. For a food product, it might be raw to cleaned and cleaned to ground.

Stage	Record	Why it matters
Intake	Grower, weight, quality remark	Payment and source tracing
Processing	Weight in and out per stage	Yield and wastage
Grading	Quantity per grade	Pricing and stock by grade
Packing	Pack size, count, batch, pack date	Link to customer sales
Dispatch	Customer, batch, quantity	Recall and complaint checks

Step 4: Mark the pack

The batch number and pack date should appear on the pack or carton. Where best-before dates apply to your product, set them according to your own testing and the guidance of the food quality bodies rather than guessing. If you do not print on the pack, keep a carton label and a sheet that links cartons to the batch.

Step 5: Link dispatch to batch

When you sell, choose the batch on the invoice or challan. This is the step most often skipped, and it is the one that makes a recall check possible. Without it, you know what was made but not who received it.

A short recall drill

Run a practice drill once a quarter. Pick a pack from the shelf, find its batch, list the sources and list every customer who received that batch. Time it. If it takes more than a few minutes in the system, something is missing. If it takes a day, your records are not yet traceable. This is a test of your own records only; real incidents involve the authorities and should follow their instructions.

Where it goes wrong

• Combining several days of material into one lot "for convenience", which makes the history meaningless.
• Changing a lot number after packing to tidy the books.
• Using the same batch for a re-pack without a new date.
• Letting one person both enter and approve changes to closed lots.

Keep it proportionate

Do not try to record everything. Choose the data that a buyer, a regulator or an unhappy customer would ask for, and make those fields compulsory. Optional fields tend to stay empty.

Sample numbering scheme

A scheme only needs to be consistent, and short enough to write on a sack. One simple pattern is product code, BS year, month, day and a running number for the day. A coffee lot received on the fifteenth of Mangsir could carry the coffee code, the year, month 08, day 15 and the second lot of the day. Anyone reading it can guess the date and product, and no two lots collide. Whatever you choose, write it on a card, pin it at the intake desk and train every new staff member on it in the first week.

Handling blends and re-packs

Blending is where traceability usually breaks. If you mix lots from two estates or two harvest weeks, create a new blend lot that lists its parent lots and their weights. If you re-pack a returned or opened product, give it a new batch and pack date and note the original batch in the record. This takes a minute and prevents a tangled history that nobody can read later.

What buyers appreciate

Buyers, whether a Kathmandu café, a supermarket buyer or an overseas importer, like to hear which season, which area and which processing method a product came from. A clean lot history lets you answer without guessing. Describe only what your records support, and never write origin or quality claims on a pack that you cannot back up with a batch record.

Your next step

Take one product and write the five steps above with the exact fields you will record. Then see how the WebsNP tea, coffee and food processing software can be configured for them, and message us on WhatsApp. For stock control across other products, inventory management software is a useful companion.

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