How Camphor Is Made in Our Gorakhpur Workshop: From Raw Crystal to Sealed Pouch

People assume camphor making is one machine and a packing table. It is closer to seven small decisions, and a bad answer at any one of them shows up later as a tablet that will not light or a plate that needs scrubbing. Here is the whole route, in the order it happens.

1. Sorting the raw material

Raw camphor arrives as crystal. The first job is rejecting anything that is not — clumps that have absorbed damp, material that smells flat, and any batch that has been stored badly in transit. Camphor is easy to judge by nose at this stage, and it is far cheaper to reject a sack than to recall a batch.

2. Conditioning

Crystals that are too dry crumble in the press; crystals carrying moisture spit when burnt. The material is rested in a controlled room until it is even throughout. This is the least visible step and the one that most affects how a tablet lights three months later.

3. Pressing

The material is pressed into shape — tablets, slabs or the loose pieces that go into pouches. Density is set per product, not per machine:

• Tablets are pressed to light instantly and burn for around three minutes: see the aarti camphor tablet.
• Slabs are pressed harder so they hold a bigger flame for longer, which is what temples need: the aarti camphor slab.
• Loose pack material is broken rather than shaped, for shops that sell by weight: the shudh slab loose pack.

Nothing is added at this stage. No binder, no wax, no bulking powder. Camphor presses into a stable tablet on its own — fillers exist only to add weight, and they are exactly what causes the soot described in the clean burn article.

4. Curing

Fresh tablets are rested before packing. A tablet packed straight off the press keeps giving off vapour inside the pouch, which softens the pouch seal and leaves the tablet slightly under weight by the time it reaches a shop. A short cure stops that.

5. The burn test

One tablet from every batch is burnt on a white tile in still air. Three things are recorded: time to ignition, whether the flame holds unaided, and the state of the tile afterwards. A clean tile passes; anything else stops the batch. It is the same test any customer can run at home, which is the point — our purity guide is simply this test written out for a kitchen.

Every great journey begins with a simple purpose — our only aim was to bring shuddh, divine camphor to every home and every temple.Sitaram Jaiswal, founder, 1987

6. Moisture-proof packing

Camphor sublimates continuously, so the pouch is not packaging, it is part of the product. Everything is sealed in moisture-proof film immediately, in the pack size it will be sold in — from a five-rupee pouch to a 500g family pack. Once a pouch is opened the clock starts again at home, which is why we wrote the storage guide.

7. Batch records

Each pack carries a batch number tied to the sorting, curing and burn-test records for that run. If a shopkeeper in another district tells us a batch lit poorly, we can look at the sheet rather than guess. Thirty-eight years of doing this is mostly thirty-eight years of keeping records.

And the incense side

Agarbatti, dhoop and sambrani follow a different route — rolling, dipping, drying and a fragrance check rather than a burn test — but the same rule applies: nothing goes in to add weight. The agarbatti range and the dhoop cones and sticks are made on that basis, and this guide explains how they differ in use.