My Soy Wax Supplier Has a 100 Kg MOQ for Wholesale Pricing — What Monthly Candle Volume Would Justify That Purchase?

The short answer: about 173 candles a month, if you hold stock for three months

A supplier who says "wholesale price from 100 kg" is offering you a lower rate in exchange for three things: your cash today, your shelf space for months, and your commitment that this wax will still be the right wax when you reach the bottom of the pile. The discount is the only one of those four numbers printed on the quote. The rest you have to work out, and the most useful way to do it is to turn 100 kg into candles and months.

At the default candle used throughout this cluster — 200 g finished weight at an 8% fragrance load, which is 16 g of oil and 184 g of wax — every saleable candle needs 184 g of wax plus a 5% allowance for pour loss and test burns (a working assumption). That is 193.2 g of wax bought per candle sold. One 100 kg MOQ therefore makes about 518 candles. Divide that by your monthly production and you know how many months the lot will sit.

Now choose the longest you are willing to hold one wax lot — your holding horizon. It is a business choice, not a chemistry fact. Three months is the example on this page because it covers one festive cycle and still leaves room to change course; your number may be two or six. The threshold volume is then simply 100 kg ÷ horizon. At three months that is 33.3 kg a month, which at 193.2 g a candle is about 173 candles a month. Below that, the MOQ ties up stock for longer than you planned. Above it, the remaining questions are cash and quality, and both have their own tests below.

100 kg in candles and months: the volume table

The table below converts common production levels into monthly wax and into how long a 100 kg lot lasts. The candle maths uses the CSI convention — fragrance load is a share of the finished weight, so oil = 200 g × 8% and wax is what is left — and the 5% allowance covers pour loss and the occasional test candle. If you pour 180 g or run 10%, rerun the numbers; the method does not change.

Two things stand out. At 50 or 100 candles a month — a busy home studio — a 100 kg lot lasts five to ten months. That is not wholesale buying; that is a year's inventory sitting in your spare room through a monsoon and a summer. At 250 candles a month and above, 100 kg is a two-month supply or less, and the question turns from "can I use it?" into "why am I still buying in small bags?" — which is the 100 kg-per-month purchasing-rhythm question. The crossover in the middle is where your horizon decides.

The cash test: does the discount outrun the cost of carrying the stock?

The supplier's discount is a saving you bank once. The cost of holding the stock runs every month the wax sits unused. A simple, honest way to compare them is to treat the average stock as half the lot (because you use it down steadily from full to empty) and to charge it a monthly cost of money. The cost of money is your own: the interest on a working-capital loan, or what that cash would earn in the business. This page uses 1.5% a month as an example rate — replace it with yours.

With the reader's price taken as ₹507.40 a kilo (the flat CSI 464 rate, used here as the price you pay today) and three example discounts — ₹20, ₹40 and ₹60 a kilo, labelled as examples because the title does not give one — the break-even holding time is 2 × discount ÷ ((price − discount) × monthly rate). Past that many months, carrying the stock has eaten the saving.

At a ₹40 discount the cash test is generous: the lot could sit for 11.4 months before carrying cost cancels the ₹4,000.00 saving. At ₹20 it is tighter — 5.5 months, or about 95 candles a month. In most realistic cases the horizon test binds first: you would not want to hold one lot for eleven months even if the interest maths allowed it, because storage, demand and your own formulation can all change in that time. Use whichever threshold is higher. With a three-month horizon and any of these discounts, that is the 173-candle figure.

What 100 kg actually costs at CSI — and why our bags are not an MOQ

It is worth checking what the alternative to the MOQ really is, because many makers compare a wholesale quote with their old 1 kg price rather than with the best small-pack price they could get. CSI's container soy waxes are listed in bags up to 10 kg, and Natural Soy Pearl Wax also comes in a 50 kg bag. There is no 25 kg carton and no 100 kg pack on the store, and no volume discount figure is published — larger quantities are quoted on WhatsApp. Here is 100 kg of each container soy wax, built only from listed packs.

Read that table as a reader, not as a seller. Only Natural Soy Pearl has a real step, and it happens at 5 kg, not at 100 kg: ₹450.00 a kilo in the 1 kg bag, ₹424.80 from 5 kg up, and exactly the same ₹424.80 in the 50 kg bag. CSI 464 is flat from 1 kg. Luxury Soy Wax Chunks are fractionally dearer per kilo in the 10 kg bag than in two 5 kg bags. So at CSI, a maker using 33 kg a month gets the lowest listed rate by buying 10 kg or 5 kg bags as needed — no MOQ, no 100 kg on the shelf. If you need more than the listed packs, ask on WhatsApp; we will quote, and we do not publish a discount figure.

The quality test: never let an MOQ be your first large batch

A wholesale offer often comes from a supplier — or a wax — you have not used at scale. The MOQ maths is meaningless if the wax does not perform in your jar, with your oil, at your load. So the qualification comes first, and it is cheap compared with the lot. The minimum is a matched bench comparison: four candles in your current, approved wax as the control and four in the candidate wax, same oil lot, same wick, same jar, same pour day. Three of each are burned; one of each goes on the shelf for storage and appearance. These counts are labelled working practice, not a standard. Whether 1 kg of successful testing is enough before ordering 100 kg and the 5 kg or 10 kg production trial set out the stages that follow.

CSI publishes no numeric flame-height or jar-temperature limit, and none is invented here. The acceptance standard is: no worse than your approved control on every safety line, and within your jar supplier's guidance and the candle fire-safety standard you work to. A cheaper wax that throws harder but heats the glass more has not passed — the discount never buys a hotter jar.

The priced bench kit and the per-candle saving

Here is the eight-candle comparison priced with CSI's listed packs. Each wax needs 736 g for four candles, or 772.8 g with the 5% allowance — one 1 kg bag of each. The oil is shared so that a lot difference cannot hide in the comparison: eight candles need 128 g of Jasmine, 134.4 g with the allowance.

Now the per-candle view, because that is where a wholesale discount actually lands. At the 10 kg rate, a 200 g Jasmine candle in CSI 464 carries ₹93.36 of wax, ₹62.77 of oil (1 kg rate), ₹5.90 for the wick and ₹70.80 for the jar: ₹232.83 in materials, excluding labour, packaging, freight and GST. In Natural Soy Pearl at the 5 kg-and-up rate the wax line is ₹78.16 and the candle is ₹217.63. With an example 3% reject rate (replace with yours) the cost per saleable candle is ₹240.03 and ₹224.36.

A ₹40 discount is worth about ₹7.73 per candle. That is real money over a year, but it is smaller than the jar, smaller than the oil, and about the size of one wick plus change. If an MOQ forces you to hold stock you cannot sell, or to switch wax without a test, a single batch of rejected candles erases months of that saving. How many candles before a ₹40-per-kg saving becomes meaningful takes this per-candle figure and turns it into a payback count.

The decision rule: four gates, then a concrete order

Apply the gates in order. Each one is a yes/no that two people would answer the same way from the same numbers. If any gate is a no, do not take the MOQ — buy the cheapest listed pack each month instead and revisit when your volume grows.

In this worked example, a maker producing 200 Jasmine candles a month uses 38.6 kg of wax, so 100 kg lasts 2.6 months — inside a three-month horizon. If Natural Soy Pearl passes the bench test and the pilot, the concrete order is Natural Soy Pearl Wax, 10 × 10 kg = ₹42,480.00 at the listed ₹424.80 a kilo, delivered as ten sealed bags that are opened one at a time. A supplier's MOQ quote would need to come in below that per kilo, after shipping, to be worth considering. A maker at 100 candles a month should not take any 100 kg MOQ: buy Natural Soy Pearl 2 × 10 kg a month (₹8,496.00) — the same per-kilo price with five months less wax on the shelf.

Where the rest of the bulk-buying cluster picks up

This page decides whether a 100 kg minimum is justified by volume. The neighbouring posts each take one adjacent decision: the payback count for a ₹40 saving, cash now versus unit cost, reorder points for a fast-growing business, safety stock when use swings from 30 to 80 kg and the full procurement system. For the first-half questions on carton sizes, see moving from 5 kg packs to 25 kg cartons and how much to order above a confirmed 92 kg.

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