I'm Switching Fragrance Oil Suppliers to Reduce Cost — Which Cold Throw, Hot Throw, Colour, Wick and Stability Tests Should I Repeat Before Production?

The seven retests

Fragrance oils with the same name from different suppliers are different formulas. They can differ in composition, in how readily they dissolve into wax, in how they burn, and in what they do to colour over time. None of that shows on the label. A new oil can also carry a different maximum use level on its IFRA certificate. The retest list below covers every property that made your current candle saleable. It is general candle-making practice, not a CSI specification. CSI publishes no throw, cure or discolouration data for any oil, so none of these results can be looked up for any supplier's oil. They have to be measured.

Two of the seven are easy to skip and expensive to miss. Colour can look identical on day one and drift by day 28, especially in a white or pale jar exposed to light. Discolouration depends on composition, and composition is exactly what changed. If a colour fault appears in a blend, My Custom Blend Performs Well at 8% but One Component Discolours the Wax — How Do I Identify Which Fragrance Is Causing It? sets out how to find the component. Stability problems such as sweating tend to show up in storage and transit rather than on the bench, so give the stability candles a warm spell and a cool spell before judging them. My Candle Sweats Oil at 12% Fragrance Load but Not at 8% — Does That Mean I Have Exceeded the Practical Fragrance Capacity of My Wax? and My Custom Fragrance Blend Causes Sweating Even Though Each Fragrance Works Individually at the Same Load — Why? cover sweating.

The retest kit, per scent

The kit is sized for one scent. Multiply it by the number of scents you are switching. All candles are 200 g, the same size as production, so no result needs scaling.

The materials: 160 g of the new oil, bought in the cheapest test-size combination. 2,208 g of wax, which is three 1 kg bags of Luxury Soy Wax Chunks at ₹599.00 (₹1,797.00). Twelve wicks across two sizes: Eco Candle Wicks Thin C1 10 (₹59.00) and Thick C2 10 (₹94.40), ₹153.40. And 3 packs of five White Matte Glass Jars (₹1,062.00). CSI does not assign wick sizes to jar diameters, so the "one size up" check uses whatever step up your current wick has. The Thick C2 is shown only as the next CSI option. Use your production jar and wick if they differ, and re-price.

Does the saving survive the retest?

Here is an example switch of four scents to CSI oils. The current supplier's prices are example figures, not market data, so replace them with your own invoices. The saving per candle assumes the new oil passes at the same 8%. The last column shows what happens if it needs 9% instead, including the wax the extra oil displaces.

At the same load, each switch pays for its retest within a few hundred candles, and the four together cost ₹15,790.92 to retest. The last column is the reason the re-ladder is on the list. If CSI Lavender needed 9% where the example oil worked at 8%, the saving would fall from ₹12.46 to ₹3.22 a candle. At 9.35% it would be zero. Sandalwood keeps the most at 9% (₹14.72), because its example price gap per gram is the widest of the four. Lavender keeps the least. None of these loads is a prediction about how CSI's oils perform. They are the questions the retest answers.

Running it

Cure length matters for a fair comparison. Both oils must be tested at exactly the same cure age, as I'm Comparing Two Fragrance Oils — Should I Burn-Test Them at Exactly the Same Cure Age to Make the Comparison Fair? explains. Do not judge the new oil at day 3 because the quote is waiting. For scaling from the test candles to a production batch, I'm Scaling from 1 Kg Test Batches to 25 Kg Commercial Batches — What Fragrance Formulation Variables Can Change Even When I Scale the Percentages Correctly? lists what else can change between a 1 kg test and a 25 kg batch.

Pass, fail, or reformulate

Switch scent by scent, not all at once. A four-scent switch in which three pass and one fails is a good result, because it saves money on three scents without putting a weaker candle on the shelf. For the fourth, try another candidate or keep the current supplier for that one scent. If you later consolidate every scent with one supplier, I Need One Fragrance Oil Supplier for Dozens of Candle Scents — How Do I Compare Performance, Consistency, Documentation, Bulk Pricing and Availability Before Consolidating Purchasing? covers what to compare beyond price. If a new oil is sold as smelling identical to your old one, My New Fragrance Oil Smells Almost Identical to the Old One but Has a Different Composition — Can I Use My Existing Wick and Fragrance Load Without Retesting? explains why that does not shorten this list.

Frequently asked questions