How a Multi-Unit Tea Blender in Assam Eliminated Blend Traceability Gaps with PACE360 ERP

Overview

For a tea blending company operating across three production units in Assam, scale is both an advantage and a complexity multiplier.

With dozens of tea estates supplying different grades, multiple blend formulas running in parallel, and a warehouse operation that handles hundreds of bags a day, the business had outgrown manual systems and spreadsheet-based blend sheets.

Traceability — knowing exactly which estate’s tea went into which batch — was becoming a critical blind spot.

Softweb Technologies deployed PACE360, its purpose-built ERP for tea blending and packaging businesses, to bring every operation from estate procurement to finished batch dispatch onto a single, connected platform.

Client Background

The client is a well-established tea blending operation in Assam with a direct procurement network covering multiple tea estates. Their product portfolio spans a range of bulk tea grades blended into proprietary recipes for institutional buyers, distributors, and branded retail. With three blending units running simultaneously, coordination between procurement, inventory, and production had grown increasingly difficult to manage without a centralized system.

The Challenges

1. Limited Traceability

Manual blend sheets and Excel-based records made it difficult to trace estate lots, approvals, and packing details during quality complaints.

2. Procurement Without Centralized Visibility

Vendor enquiries, negotiations, and purchase orders were managed through calls and emails, with critical supplier information scattered across personal inboxes.

3. Inventory Inaccuracies

Lack of barcode/QR-based tracking led to stock mismatches, while inconsistent FIFO practices affected quality control and inventory aging.

4. Manual Multi-Unit Coordination

Three blending units operated independently, relying on calls and WhatsApp for stock transfers, production updates, and downtime reporting, limiting management visibility.

5. Untracked Moisture Loss

Inventory was recorded at standard weights, ignoring moisture-related weight loss during storage, resulting in variances in stock, costing, and production planning.

The PACE360 – ERP for Tea Blenders

Digital Tea Estate Vendor Portal

All tea estates were onboarded into a structured vendor portal within PACE360. Each estate profile captures garden codes, tea grades, certifications, capacity, and banking details. The procurement team now raises digital RFQs directly through the system, estates submit grade-wise rate quotations online, and purchase orders are generated with an approval workflow — with a full negotiation and pricing history stored against each vendor.

Blending Management with Lot-Level Traceability

PACE360’s blend sheet module now manages every recipe in the company’s portfolio. When a production planner creates a blend plan, the system allocates specific estate lots to the recipe based on available inventory. Each lot issued from the warehouse is scanned and digitally acknowledged, linking it permanently to the batch.

Barcode-Based Warehouse Management

Every incoming tea bag is now tagged with a unique QR code carrying estate name, grade, lot number, arrival date, weight, moisture reading, and warehouse location. The mobile-based GRN process means warehouse staff verify bag count, quality remarks, and moisture at the gate on Android devices — eliminating desktop entry delays and reducing the chance of fraudulent or mismatched entries.

Dual-Unit Inventory Tracking for Moisture Loss

Multi-Unit Control Tower

Quality Control at Every Touchpoint

Results at a Glance

Why PACE360

Generic ERP platforms are not built around the operational realities of tea blending — FIFO enforcement for estate lots, dual-unit moisture-adjusted inventory, lot-level traceability through a multi-step blending and production chain, or multi-plant coordination across geographically spread blending units. PACE360 is purpose-built for this industry, which means the configuration effort is significantly lower and the workflows fit the business rather than working around it.