How Much Fragrance Oil Inventory Should a Candle Manufacturer Keep?

Count inventory in weeks

A candle manufacturer's fragrance shelf holds scents that pour at wildly different rates. A kilo of the best-seller might last a month; a kilo of a slow line might last half a year. Counting in grams or bottles hides that difference. Counting in weeks of cover makes it the whole point. The calculation is one division: grams on hand divided by grams poured per week. Weekly use is candles poured per week times oil per candle, plus an allowance for pour loss and test burns.

This page uses 200 g candles at an 8% load, so each candle takes 16 g of oil, and a 4% allowance, a working assumption within the usual 3–5%. A scent poured 25 times a week uses 416 g a week. If the shelf holds 700 g of it, that is 1.7 weeks of cover. That number can be compared directly with any other scent's, with your lead time, and with your ordering rhythm, which is what makes it the right unit for every decision below.

The table explains a lot of over-stocking. A kilo is a sensible monthly buy for a scent poured about 15 times a week. For a scent poured 3 times a week the same kilo is 20.0 weeks of stock, nearly five months. Nothing about the kilo changed; the pouring rate did. How to Buy Candle Fragrance Oils in Bulk Every Month covers how to pick the pack mix once you know the weeks you need, and How Many Kg of Fragrance Oil Does a Small Candle Manufacturer Need Per Month? sizes monthly kilograms for common production volumes.

Setting the target: review, lead time, safety

How many weeks should you hold? Enough to get from one order to the next without running out, and no more. That breaks into three parts:

Notice the last two columns do not change with lead time. That surprises people. A longer lead time raises the trigger and the order-up-to level, but because the order arrives later, the average on the shelf stays at safety plus half the review period. What a longer lead time really costs you is earlier decisions: you commit to next month's quantities further ahead, so forecasting errors grow, and in practice you need more safety stock. That is why a written, dependable lead time is worth asking for; a variable one forces you to hold extra cover for the variation.

An eight-scent stock count

Here is the method applied to a worked stock count. Eight scents, each with a weekly pouring rate and the grams found on the shelf at the count. The policy is the middle row above: a monthly review, an assumed 2-week lead time and 2 weeks of safety, so the trigger is 4 weeks and the order-up-to level 8 weeks.

The count looks healthy in total: 8.05 kg of oil, about 5.0 weeks of the whole range. Scent by scent, it is not. Gardenia, the best-seller, has 1.7 weeks — below the 4-week trigger, so it needs ordering today whatever the calendar says. Palo Santo has 0.9 weeks, which is worse. Meanwhile Gilli Mitti has 20.0 weeks and White Royal Oud 12.0, and Woody Oud sits just above the 8-week ceiling at 8.7: stock the policy did not ask for. A total hides both problems. Weeks of cover by scent shows them at once.

What the target costs in cash

In the worked range, the eight scents pour 1597.4 g of oil a week between them. Valued at each oil's 1 kg rate, one week of cover is worth ₹8,460.51. So the policy's average stock of about 4 weeks ties up about ₹33,842.05. Change the policy and the number moves:

Two levers are visible. Ordering fortnightly instead of monthly takes a week off the average, worth ₹8,460.51 here. Cutting safety stock by a week does the same, but at more risk. The first lever is cheap on CSI's catalogue for a specific reason: for 52 of 91 oils the price per gram is within 1% from 100 g to 1 kg, so buying smaller, more often, costs almost nothing extra per candle. The exception is the 24 oils with a real kilo saving, where smaller orders cost more per gram. For those, a monthly kilo may be worth the extra week of stock.

Cash is not the only cost of holding stock. Fragrance oils are best kept sealed, cool and away from light, and a workshop in an Indian summer is none of those things. This page does not state a shelf life for any oil, because that belongs on the product page or the supplier's documentation; ask on WhatsApp if you need it for a specific scent. What is certain is that less stock sitting for less time is less exposed. That is one more reason to hold weeks, not kilos. If fewer, larger deliveries from one source suit your storage better, How to Consolidate Fragrance Oil Purchasing With One Supplier weighs up consolidating onto one supplier.

Slow sellers and the kilo trap

The count's over-stocked scents both have the same cause: a kilo bought for a slow line. Gilli Mitti at 3 candles a week pours 49.9 g a week, so one kilo lasts 20.0 weeks. Its price is flat at ₹8.96 a gram from 50 g to 1 kg, which means there was never a price reason to buy the kilo. At an 8-week order-up-to level, a slow line like this needs about 399 g on the shelf at most, which is four 100 g bottles.

The last column is the one that should decide whether a slow scent is worth a kilo. For most of the range the 100 g costs the same per gram as the kilo, so there is no reason to hold more than the target. Where the kilo is noticeably cheaper per gram, holding a few extra weeks can pay for itself; where it is not, it only costs cash. For choosing which scents deserve deep buffers and which should run lean, see How to Avoid Running Out of Best-Selling Candle Fragrances. For the scents that should always be on the shelf at all, see Which Candle Fragrance Oils Should I Always Keep in Stock?.

Here are three oils from the count that show the three inventory situations: a fast seller below its trigger, a mid-volume scent sitting comfortably in its band, and a slow line that should never be bought by the kilo.

The top-up order

Here is the order the count produces: each scent brought up to 8 weeks of cover, rounded to the cheapest combination of in-stock 1 kg, 500 g and 100 g packs. Scents already at or above the order-up-to level are skipped.

The order is ₹30,543.80, and most of it goes to the two scents that were short; the rest brings the three mid-volume scents, all just above their trigger, back up to the ceiling. Nothing is spent on Woody Oud, White Royal Oud or Gilli Mitti, which already hold more than the policy asks. The figures exclude wax, wicks, jars, labour, packaging, freight and GST. Because Gardenia and Palo Santo were below the trigger, this order should go today rather than on the scheduled day; How to Set Reorder Levels for Candle Fragrance Oils shows how to set those triggers per scent in grams so the count flags them automatically.

Frequently asked questions