Choosing a batch size
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Batch size in this craft is decided by how long the melt stays pourable, not by how much you can melt.
What sets the ceiling
The working window. Once flavor is in, the melt is cooling and the clock is running: pour too slowly and the last tubes are filled from a thicker, cooler, differently behaving liquid than the first.
Hand-filling a hundred tubes from one pot takes longer than the window allows for most formulas, which is why a large batch is poured in several pot-loads rather than one.
And settling, if there is pigment. A long pour is a color gradient.
What sets the floor
Weighing accuracy. A flavor at half a percent of a hundred gram batch is half a gram, which most kitchen scales cannot hold to a useful tolerance.
Below a few hundred grams the formula stops being reproducible, which makes tiny test batches useful for looking at and unreliable for judging.
The number people often land on
Something that fills 40 to 60 standard tubes: large enough to weigh accurately and small enough to pour inside the window.
Then scale by running more batches rather than bigger ones, until a pouring method changes the window itself.
Batch size is a shelf life decision
The finished balm carries the clock of its shortest-lived oil. A run that covers six months of sales spends most of that clock in a box.
Smaller and more often costs labor and buys freshness, and in a product the customer puts on their mouth that is usually the right side to err on.