I Have 5 Kg of Fragrance Oil — How Many 200 g Finished Candles Can I Produce at 8% Before I Need to Reorder?

312 in theory, 297 to plan

The load is a share of the finished candle: 200 g at 8% is 16 g of oil and 184 g of wax. The count is the stock divided by the dose, rounded down. At production scale the allowance matters more than it does on a single bottle, because every percentage point is worth several candles. Here is the 5 kg with a range of pour-loss allowances:

The 5% row is this page's planning figure. Track your real loss across the first kilo: weigh the oil before and after each batch and count the candles. If your loss turns out to be 2%, the same 5 kg covers 306 candles, nine more than planned, and your reorder point moves later accordingly. The 500 g lavender page shows the allowance ladder in more detail, including test candles.

The reorder point

A candle count tells you when the oil runs out. A reorder point tells you when to order, which is earlier, because the new oil takes time to arrive and because sales are never perfectly even. The formula is short:

Here is the calculation with example figures. You pour 50 candles a week. With the 5% allowance, that is 50 × 16.8 g = 840 g of oil a week. Your supplier takes 1 week to deliver (an example; use yours). You want 1 week of safety stock (also an example). The reorder point is 840 g × (1 + 1) = 1,680 g.

In practice this means: when the oil on the shelf drops to 1,680 g, place the order. That is after about 197 candles, or just under four weeks at 50 a week. If the supplier takes a week, the new oil lands with about 840 g still on the shelf, which is your safety week. Keep the reorder point written on the stock shelf in grams, and weigh the open container at the end of each production day. Counting candles works too, but weighing catches spills, samples and heavy pours that a candle count misses.

The same 5 kg at five production rates

Read the last row carefully. At 150 candles a week, the reorder point (5,040 g) is larger than the whole 5 kg, so five kilos cannot carry a 1-week lead time plus a 1-week safety stock. Either order a larger lot, shorten the safety cover, or order the next lot on the same day the first one arrives. At 25 candles a week the opposite is true: the 5 kg lasts almost 12 weeks, and you should ask whether you need five kilos at all. The 500 g or 1 kg decision and the kilo break-even page look at that side.

Two refinements are worth adding once you have a few months of data. First, if sales swing from week to week, size the safety stock to the swing, not to the average. Safety stock when demand varies by 20% does that maths. Second, if you sell several scents, each has its own rate and its own reorder point; a combined figure hides the scent that runs out first. Inventory across ten fragrances covers that.

Buying five kilos at CSI

CSI's listed fragrance packs stop at 1 kg per oil, so "a 5 kg pack" is five 1 kg packs from the store, or a quote on WhatsApp for more than the listed packs. No volume discount figure is published. Here is what five kilos costs for three commonly used oils, and what the reorder point is worth in money:

For British Rose and Jasmine, the kilo is a real saving: British Rose's 1 kg is 10.3% cheaper per gram than its 100 g, and Jasmine's 8.8%. Lavender's is 3.3%, which on five kilos is ₹895.00. For most oils in the catalogue the kilo is within 1% of the 100 g per gram, so the reason to hold five kilos is continuity of supply and one production lot, not price. Ask CSI whether all five kilos can come from a single lot, and keep a retained sample of each lot you receive.

Wax: stage it, do not stockpile it

If 5 kg of oil is the stock, the wax to match it is 297 × 184 g × 1.05 = 57,380.4 g, over 57 kilos. Rounded to Luxury Soy Wax Chunks bags that is 5 × 10 kg + 1 × 5 kg + 2 × 1 kg + 1 × 500 g, ₹34,487.00. You do not need to buy it all at once. Wax is bulky, and unlike the oil it is not the ingredient that sets your count. Buy it per production cycle instead.

Luxury Soy Wax Chunks are priced flat per kilo (₹599.00 at 1 kg and 5 kg, ₹599.90 at 10 kg), so staging the purchase costs nothing extra per kilo. Two 5 kg bags are ₹9.00 cheaper than one 10 kg bag. Natural Soy Pearl Wax is the one CSI wax with a real bulk break (₹450.00 at 1 kg, ₹424.80 a kilo at 5 kg and above) and a 50 kg bag, but no fragrance ceiling is quoted for it in this series, so check its product page before running it at 8%. Counting candles from 50 kg of wax works the wax side at this scale.

If your 5 kg is actually a festive build-up rather than steady stock, entering Diwali with triple demand sizes the pre-season purchase. For a formula built from several oils, the same reorder logic applies to each component; the 50:30:20 blend page shows how the components deplete at different rates.

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