I Need Enough Fragrance Oil for 500 × 200 g Candles at 8% Load — How Much Should I Order After Including Formulation Trials and Production Wastage?

The order, line by line

Most under-orders come from counting only the first job, and most over-orders come from counting one of the others twice. "Add 10% to be safe" on top of a wastage allowance, on top of trial oil that was already bought, is how a maker ends up with a spare kilo. The table builds the order one line at a time, and each line has its own reason.

Candles to sell is plain arithmetic: 16 g in each of 500 candles. QC pulls are candles you pour from the production wax and then burn, sniff, photograph and keep, rather than sell. One in 50 is a working rate that gives you 10 pulls spread across the run, enough to catch a batch whose throw, colour or burn has drifted. Some makers pull one per melt instead. If your melter holds 50 candles' worth, the two rules are the same. Pulls are counted in whole candles, because a QC candle has to be identical to a sold one.

Pour loss is the scented wax that never becomes a saleable candle: the film left in the melter and jug, spills, a candle that has to be scrapped, the top-up pour you mix a little too much of. Since it is scented wax that is lost, oil is lost at the same rate as wax. Plan 3–5% as a working assumption. At 3% the allowance is 245 g and the order 8,405 g; at 5% it is 408 g and 8,568 g. This page uses 5%, because running short halfway through a 500-candle run costs more than 163 g of extra oil. Measure your real loss on the first two batches and use that number next time.

The trial oil comes first

Trials are the oil that decides the other numbers, so they cannot be bought in the same order as production. The plan used here is deliberately small. Stage A, the load ladder: two 200 g candles at each of 6%, 8% and 10%, which is 2 × (12 + 16 + 20) = 96 g of oil. Stage B, the wick check: two candles each on two wick options at the load that won Stage A, 4 × 16 = 64 g. Total 160 g. The candles are the same 200 g size as production, in the same jar and wax, so what you learn carries straight across. How Do I Compare the Performance of 6%, 8% and 10% Fragrance Loads Objectively Instead of Choosing Whichever Candle Smells Strongest to Me? sets out how to score the ladder objectively, and My Candle Smells Strong at 10% Fragrance Load but the Wick Struggles — How Do I Determine Whether Reducing Fragrance or Increasing Wick Size Is the Better Solution? covers the wick-or-load decision in Stage B.

On Jasmine's ladder the cheapest way to hold 160 g is 1 × 100 g + 1 × 50 g + 1 × 15 g = 165 g for ₹763.00. Two 100 g bottles would cost ₹860.00. The 15 g's per-gram premium (₹6.87 against ₹4.30) is worth paying here, because it buys only 15 g of it. Trials use 1,840 g of wax, so two 1 kg bags of Luxury Soy Wax Chunks at ₹599.00 each cover them. The trial candles also cure for the same time the production candles will. A trial burned at two days tells you about a candle your customer will never receive.

The convention trap

CSI uses one convention in every guide: load is a share of the finished candle weight. Oil = 200 g × 8% = 16 g, and wax = 200 − 16 = 184 g. Many makers instead weigh the wax first and add 8% of that: 184 g × 8% = 14.72 g. That candle is 198.72 g, not 200 g, and its true load is 7.41%. Neither method is wrong in itself. The damage comes from ordering with one and pouring with the other.

If you order by the wax convention (7,360 g) and then pour by finished weight (16 g a candle), you run out after about 460 candles, before QC pulls or pour loss. If you order by finished weight and pour by the wax convention, you finish with 640 g spare and a run of candles at 7.41% instead of the 8% you tested. Pick one convention, write it on the batch sheet, and use it for trials, ordering and pouring. For a fixed-wax batch, the third row gives the true load: 1 kg of wax at 8% needs 86.96 g of oil. I'm Making a 1 Kg Soy Wax Batch at 8% Fragrance Load — Do I Add 80 g Fragrance Oil to 1 Kg Wax or Should the 8% be Calculated from the Total Finished Candle Weight? and I'm Making 10 Kg of Scented Candles at 8% Fragrance Load — How Do I Calculate the Exact Wax and Fragrance Quantities Without Accidentally Making a 10.8 Kg Batch? work through both conventions at batch scale.

Turning grams into packs

The production order is 8,568 g, and listed packs come in fixed sizes, so the last step is choosing the combination. The rule is to cover the grams at the lowest total cost using in-stock sizes only. For production, stick to 100 g, 500 g and 1 kg bottles. Testers carry a per-gram premium and are more containers to empty. For Jasmine, the cheapest cover is 8 × 1 kg + 1 × 500 g + 1 × 100 g = 8,600 g for ₹33,775.00, which leaves 32 g over. Nine kilos would cost ₹35,307.00 and leave 432 g over. The saving from the right combination is small, ₹1,532.00, but so is the leftover.

The four oils show four different ladders. Jasmine and Citrus Lemon have 500 g and 1 kg at the same per-gram rate, so the combination is just the smallest overshoot. Hawas Ice (Rasasi Inspired) lists no 500 g, so the remainder comes in 100 g bottles, still at the same ₹9.08 a gram because its ladder is flat. Saffron Cedarwood is the odd one out. Its 500 g (₹5.17/g) is cheaper than its 1 kg (₹6.87/g), so the cheapest cover is 500 g bottles only. Buying it as whole kilos would cost ₹17,180.80 more. Always check the whole ladder before assuming the kilo is the production size. I'm Launching 10 Candle Fragrances — How Do I Decide Which Scents Deserve 1 Kg Fragrance Oil Purchases and Which Should Remain in Smaller Trial Sizes? explains how to read it.

Order after trials, not before

The trials exist to tell you the load, and the load drives the order more than anything else on this page. Here is the same 500-candle run with QC pulls and 5% pour loss, at the four loads a ladder might settle on:

Each point of load adds (500 + 10) × 2 g × 1.05 = 1,071 g, a kilo bottle and change: 8,568 g at 8% becomes 9,639 g at 9%. At 10% the order is 10,710 g, and the wax matters. Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 is rated up to 10%, so a 10% candle sits exactly at its ceiling with no headroom for a heavy-handed pour. Luxury Soy Wax Chunks are rated up to 13%. Those ratings are the wax makers' stated formulation maximums, not the optimum and not a regulatory limit. I'm Producing 1,000 × 200 g Candles at 10% Fragrance Load — How Many Kilograms of Fragrance Oil Should I Purchase so I Don't Run Short During Production? covers what running at 10% means for a 1,000-candle order.

The full shopping list

Here is the complete bill for the run: trials and production, oil, wax, wicks and jars. Production wax is (500 + 10) × 184 g × 1.05 = 98,532 g, which is 10 × 10 kg bags of Luxury Soy Wax Chunks. Wicks are one per candle (510), and jars come in packs of five.

Oil is ₹34,538.00 of that ₹1,35,763.40. Per sold candle, production oil is ₹67.55, wax ₹119.98, and the trial oil adds ₹1.53. That trial figure is the cheapest insurance in the whole bill. Labels, boxes, lids, courier and GST are not included, because CSI has no prices for them. Add them from your own quotes. One Fragrance Oil Costs More but Gives Stronger Hot Throw at a Lower Dosage — How Do I Compare Fragrance Oils by Cost per Finished Candle Rather than Price per Kilogram? shows how to turn the list into a full cost per finished candle.

Four ways a 500-candle order goes short

The convention switch. Ordering with 8% of wax and pouring with 8% of total, as shown above, leaves you 640 g short before QC pulls and pour loss are even counted. The re-melt that loses scent. Holding scented wax hot for hours, or re-melting rejects repeatedly, is commonly described as losing some of the lighter notes. No loss percentage is published, so keep hold times short and consistent rather than adding extra oil to compensate. The heavy hand at the scale. Rounding every 16 g up to 17 g across 510 candles uses 510 g more than planned, so weigh oil per batch, not per candle. The late QC decision. Deciding to pull QC candles halfway through the run takes them from the sold count. Put them in the order from the start.

A fifth risk is outside your workshop. A size can go out of stock between your trial and your production order. On the pull date, for example, several oils had sizes out of stock, including Vetiver's 1 kg and Chocolate Fudge's 100 g. Check the product page on the day you order, and if the scent is critical, ask CSI on WhatsApp about stock before the trial finishes. If you are running several scents in the same 500 candles, I'm Making 500 Candles Across Five Fragrances — How Do I Divide My Fragrance Oil Purchase When Some Scents Are Expected to Sell More than Others? covers how to split the grams, and I'm Switching Fragrance Oil Suppliers to Reduce Cost — Which Cold Throw, Hot Throw, Colour, Wick and Stability Tests Should I Repeat Before Production? covers what to retest if you ever have to substitute an oil.

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