I Want 100 Finished Candles but Also Need Burn-Test Samples — How Many Additional Jars, Wicks, Wax and Fragrance Should I Budget for?

Test candles are candles: budget every material for them

This page uses the one CSI container whose fill weight is published: the Golden Aluminium Tin (85 g fill), listed with an 85 g fill in packs of 12 at ₹360.00 (₹30.00 a tin). That removes the usual guesswork about fill, so the test budget can be exact. At an 8% load — CSI's working default, inside Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464's stated 10% ceiling — each tin holds 6.8 g of Lemongrass and Lime and 78.2 g of wax. Every test candle needs exactly that, plus a wick, a sticker and a tin.

Burn-test samples fall into two groups, and they are bought at different times. Stage-one candles are poured before the production order, to decide the wick (and sometimes the load); they come from small bottles and sample wick packs. Production checks are poured from the production lot: a couple of first-pour candles burned before the rest are labelled, and a retained candle kept from every batch for later comparison. The first group decides what to buy; the second protects what you have bought.

What each programme adds, material by material

Here is the additional purchase for each programme, measured against an order with no test candles at all (100 saleable tins with a 3% reject allowance, 5% pour loss and 4 spare wicks — labelled assumptions). Tins have no glass breakage line, so the container count is simply candles poured, rounded to packs of 12. Stage-one wicks are sample packs: Eco Thin C1 as a 20-pack (₹118.00; the 10-pack is out of stock) and, in the two-wick programmes, Eco Thick C2 as a 10-pack (₹94.40).

Two things stand out. First, the grams are small: a test tin is 78.2 g of wax and 6.8 g of oil, so even the extended programme adds well under 2 kg of wax. Second, the rupees do not track the candle count neatly, because every line rounds to a pack. Tins come in twelves, wicks in twenties and tens, and the stage-one oil comes from small bottles that cost more per gram than production bottles. A material cost of roughly ₹110.94 per tin at production rates (wax, oil, wick and tin; excluding labour) is a fair way to sanity-check any line.

The Standard programme, built up step by step

The Standard programme is the sensible default for a first 100-candle run: two wick sizes tested side by side, a shelf candle for each, two first-pour checks and one retained candle. Here is its allowance stack, followed by the full priced order.

If Thick C2 wins instead, the production wick line changes: Thick C2 is ₹9.44 a wick, and its sample 10-pack leaves only a couple after four candles, so most of the 111 come from a 100-pack (₹944.00) plus a 20-pack or 10-pack. That is the one line in this order that depends on the test result; the wick sample-ladder post goes through it rung by rung.

What each test candle is for

Is the test budget worth it on 100 tins?

The Standard programme adds ₹1,479.92 to a 100-tin order, which is ₹14.80 per saleable tin. Set that against the cost of finding a wick problem after the run: 100 tins of wax and oil that may need remelting or relabelling, a production wick pack that may be the wrong size, and customers who received a tin that tunnels. The minimal programme is cheaper at ₹292.04, but it tests one wick only — if that wick fails, you are back to buying samples with production waiting.

The CSI products in this programme

Related 100-candle shopping lists

This page owns the test-candle budget. 105 or 110 owns the rest of the buffer; the wick sample ladder owns choosing between wicks; first 100: bulk or small sorts every material by when to buy it; 75 bergamot candles from testing to production follows one scent through every stage; and the 100-candle template has a test-materials line ready to fill. For a client order, a new fragrance before client approval covers sample candles for someone else's sign-off.

Frequently asked questions