I Need to Produce 2,000 × 150 g Candles — How Do I Calculate the Total Wax Requirement Without Accidentally Treating Finished Candle Weight as Pure Wax Weight?

Why 150 g is not 150 g of wax

Every order in this series is written the way customers write it: a count and a finished weight. A 150 g candle is the wax, the fragrance oil and nothing else by weight (wick and jar aside). The fragrance load is a share of that finished weight, so at 8% the oil is 150 × 0.08 = 12 g and the wax is the remainder, 138 g. Once the candle is split, multiplying by 2,000 is trivial. The errors happen when the multiplication comes first.

At the listed paraffin price that is ₹48.85 of wax and, at the Citrus Lemon 1 kg rate of ₹2,832.00 a kilo, ₹33.98 of oil per candle. Add one Cotton Braided Wick (₹12.00 at every pack size) and one 200 ml Salsa jar from the 100-pack (₹29.50) and the raw-material cost is ₹124.34 per candle, before labour, labels, boxes, freight and GST.

Three wrong sheets, priced

These are the three versions of the mistake that turn up most often in makers' order sheets. Each one looks reasonable in isolation, which is why they survive. The table puts each against the correct split, with the money at the listed paraffin and Citrus Lemon prices.

Sheet A is the classic: the 150 g goes into the wax column, the oil is calculated correctly from the finished weight, and the two are added. The total is 324 kg of candle mix. Sheet B does the same thing at the pouring table: each jar gets 150 g of wax and 12 g of oil, so every candle comes out at 162 g, over the fill line you tested, with a true load of 7.41%. Sheet C gets the wax right but calculates the oil from it: 276 kg × 8% = 22.08 kg, which leaves each candle 0.96 g short of oil. Across the run that is 1.92 kg of fragrance you meant to use, and a candle that is measurably weaker than the one you signed off.

The sheet layout that cannot make the mistake

Three checks do three different jobs. K catches a sheet where someone typed a wax figure directly instead of deriving it. L catches the oil-as-a-percentage-of-wax error, because it would read 7.41% instead of 8%. M is the one to read out loud before you pay: if the wax column is really buying for 2,160 candles when the order is 2,020 including tests, M will say so. None of these checks needs anything more than subtraction and division, and all three should be visible on the printed purchase sheet, not hidden in a tab.

If the order has more than one candle size, give each size its own row and sum columns I and J at the bottom. Wax is shared across rows; oil usually is not, because each size may carry a different fragrance. The three-size, four-fragrance sheet extends this layout without double-counting, and combining three orders in one month shows how to share the wax column while keeping fragrance and packaging separate.

The same sheet at 6% and 10%

The title leaves the load open. Change cell C and the sheet recalculates; the table shows the result. Fully Refined Paraffin Wax Pellets do not have a published fragrance ceiling in this data, so treat 6–10% as a labelled test range, check the product page or ask CSI on WhatsApp for the wax maker's stated maximum, and confirm any change with a burn test before you order.

Notice that a higher load lowers the wax. At 10%, each 150 g candle carries 15 g of oil and 135 g of wax, so the order needs 6 kg less wax than at 8%. Makers who add oil on top of a fixed wax weight never see this, because in their sheets the wax never moves. The finished-weight convention makes the trade-off explicit: more oil in, less wax needed, same number of candles out. The fragrance side of that trade is covered in the 2,000 × 150 g at 10% fragrance guide.

Rounding and the priced order

With 20 test candles and 3% pour loss, column H is 312.09 kg, so the order needs 287.123 kg of wax and 24.967 kg of oil. Paraffin pellets are listed in two sizes only, 500 g and 1 kg, at the same ₹354.00 a kilo, so the wax rounds to 287 × 1 kg + 1 × 500 g: 288 bags. Citrus Lemon's 1 kg is ₹2.83 a gram against ₹3.00 at 100 g, a 5.6% saving, so the oil rounds to 25 × 1 kg.

Per delivered candle that is ₹128.94 in raw materials, against ₹124.34 from the net split; the difference pays for the test candles, pour loss, spare jars and wicks, and rounding. The Salsa jar comes with a golden lug cap, so no separate lid is needed for this order; labels, boxes and freight are yours to add from your own quotes. The wick choice here is illustrative. CSI does not publish a wick size per jar diameter, so test Cotton Braided against Eco Candle Wicks in your own jar before committing to 2,070 of either.

Keep the sheet after the run and replace the 3% with your measured loss. The 1,000 × 200 g guide sizes a heavier test plan, the 5,000 × 100 g guide adds a deliberate safety stock, and 25 kg of soy wax into 150 g candles runs the same split backwards from a wax quantity.

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