Keep every spice lot, grind batch and blend recipe on record per pack.

Spice buyers deal in lots of chilli, turmeric, coriander and pepper that differ by crop, moisture and quality. The lot that goes into the mill decides the colour and strength of what comes out, so it has to be known. A complaint about colour can arrive months after the sack was emptied into the hopper and the paperwork was filed away.

Batch and pack tracking for spice makers keeps that lot visible through cleaning, grinding and blending. Each blended masala can then be followed from the sacks at the gate to the packed carton. Describe your grinding and blending routine, and lot numbers, yields and recipes are laid out to suit it.

Whole spices arrive in sacks from traders and farmers. The store samples each lot for moisture, foreign matter and colour, then accepts, rejects or grades it. Cleaning and destoning remove stalks, stones and dust. Some spices are dried, roasted or sterilised before milling. Grinding runs through hammer or pin mills, and the powder is sieved to a mesh size. The yield after cleaning loss and grind loss decides whether the lot was worth its price, and that figure depends on weights taken at the cleaner, the mill and the sieve.

Blends are made to a recipe by weight. Packing lines fill sachets, pouches and jars, and each pack is coded with a batch and a date. Retail customers, institutional kitchens and exporters each ask for different pack sizes and documents, and a single blend may be packed in four sizes for four buyers in one week. A complaint about colour or aroma months later needs the lot behind the batch. Nobody knows which supplier to question.