I Can Buy 25 Kg Today or 100 Kg at a Discount — How Do I Compare Immediate Cash Preservation Against Lower Unit Cost?

Buy 100 kg only if the net saving beats what that cash could do this month

This is a cash question dressed as a price question. Both paths give you the same 100 kg of wax over four months. Path A pays ₹12,685.00 at the start of each month. Path B — the bulk offer, here an example quote of ₹477.40 a kilo, ₹30 below the 25 kg price — pays ₹47,740.00 on day one. Path B is cheaper in total by ₹3,000.00. But it takes ₹35,055.00 more out of your bank account on day one, ₹22,370.00 more at the start of month two and ₹9,685.00 more at the start of month three. Only in month four does it come out ahead.

Put a price on that extra cash and the saving shrinks. At an example cost of money of 1.5% a month — use your own: a loan rate, an overdraft rate, or the return the cash earns in your business — the extra cash tied up costs ₹1,006.65. The net saving is ₹1,993.35, about 3.9% of the four months' wax. That is the number to weigh against three things the discount cannot see: whether you need the cash for something that earns more, whether your monthly use will really stay at 25 kg, and whether this is still the wax you want to be pouring in month four.

For most small Indian candle businesses in October, the third question is decisive. If your wax choice is settled — tested, piloted, through a summer — and your cash buffer survives the bigger payment, take the 100 kg. If you are still comparing waxes, if festive orders need cash for oil and jars, or if your cash would drop below your safety buffer, buy 25 kg today. The flexibility is worth more than ₹1,993.35.

The month-by-month cash comparison

Here are both paths side by side. The 25 kg price is CSI's listed price for Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464, which is flat at ₹507.40 a kilo from 1 kg up. The 100 kg price is an example — the title gives no figure, and CSI publishes no volume discount — so put your real quote in its place. The arithmetic does not change.

The same comparison can be done as a present value: discount each of Path A's four payments at 1.5% a month and add them up. That gives ₹49,626.26 in today's money, against ₹47,740.00 for Path B — a gap of ₹1,886.26, close to the simple net figure above. It also tells you the break-even quote: any 100 kg price above ₹496.26 a kilo — a discount smaller than ₹11.14 — is worse than buying 25 kg a month at this cost of money, even before any risk.

The cash-buffer test and what the cash could do instead

Before comparing returns, check survival. Suppose — as an example you replace — you have ₹60,000.00 available for materials and you never want to drop below a ₹25,000.00 buffer for refunds, courier bills and the unexpected. Path A leaves ₹47,315.00 after this month's wax. Path B leaves ₹12,260.00, which is below the buffer. If your own numbers look like that, the decision is made: buy 25 kg, whatever the discount.

If both paths pass, ask what the extra ₹35,055.00 would do in the business this month. In October, the obvious answer is festive stock. At CSI's 1 kg price for Bergamot Amber (₹5,437.00), that cash buys 6.45 kg of oil — enough fragrance for about 403 candles of 200 g at 8%. If those candles would sell, the cash earns far more as oil than as a ₹1,993.35 wax saving. If they would not, the bulk discount is the better use. Either way, it is a comparison you make with your own order book, not with a rule of thumb.

The option you keep by buying 25 kg: changing your wax

There is a cost on Path B that no spreadsheet shows by default: once you hold 75 kg of one wax, switching becomes expensive. If you are halfway through comparing two waxes — say your current CSI 464 against Premium Coconut Soy Wax CSI 468 — a 100 kg order today quietly decides the comparison for you. Buying 25 kg covers this month's production while the test finishes. Then you commit to the winner.

The bench test is the same control method used throughout this series: four candles in the current wax as the control, four in the candidate, same oil lot, same wick, same jar, same pour day, three burned and one shelved per wax — labelled working practice, not a standard. CSI's product page for CSI 468 states a 50–53°C melting point, a 58–60°C pour temperature and up to 13% fragrance load; CSI 464's page lists up to 10% and an 80–90°C melt/pour working range. Those are the makers' figures, not a verdict on which wax suits your candle — the scoring sheet decides that.

The priced test kit and the per-candle numbers

Because the control wax comes out of the 25 kg you are already buying, the kit only adds the candidate wax, the shared oil, wicks and jars. Four 200 g candles need 736 g of wax, 772.8 g with a 5% allowance. Eight candles need 128 g of oil, 134.4 g with the same allowance.

Set the kit against the bulk decision. ₹2,257.00 buys you certainty about which wax deserves the next 100 kg — roughly 113.2% of the net bulk saving in this example. The per-candle picture also shows why the wax decision matters more than the discount: a 200 g Bergamot Amber candle costs ₹257.05 in materials in CSI 464 and ₹280.90 in CSI 468 at their 10 kg rates (wick and jar included; labour, packaging, freight and GST excluded). The ₹30 example discount is worth ₹5.80 a candle. The choice of wax moves the candle by ₹23.85 — and only a test can tell you whether that difference buys anything your customers notice.

The decision rule: five questions, in order

For the worked example — a maker using 25 kg of CSI 464 a month in October, still testing CSI 468, with Diwali orders to fund — the rule stops at question 1. The concrete order is Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464, 2 × 10 kg + 1 × 5 kg = ₹12,685.00, plus the ₹2,257.00 test kit. Revisit the 100 kg quote in November with a finished scoring sheet and a clearer view of post-festive demand. If your wax decision is already closed and your buffer survives, the same rule may well say take the 100 kg — the point is to know which question you are answering.

Related bulk-buying questions

This post compares two cash paths for the same wax. The 100 kg MOQ threshold asks whether your volume justifies a bulk minimum at all, and the ₹40-per-kg payback count turns a fixed saving into candles. Once the purchase pattern is settled, set a reorder point so you never run out between orders, and plan the Diwali 300 kg if the festive peak is what is pushing you to buy big. For the first-half view on this exact quantity, see 20 kg a month: 25 kg at a time or more than one month of stock.

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