My Supplier Offers 5 Kg Fragrance Packs at a Lower Per-Kg Price — What Monthly Consumption Makes Buying Bulk Financially Sensible?

Step one: your monthly consumption, oil by oil

A maker who pours 500 candles a month across eight scents does not use 8 kg of one oil. The 5 kg question is always about one oil, so start with that oil's numbers:

Monthly consumption (kg) = candles a month of that scent × grams of oil per candle ÷ 1,000. Grams of oil per candle = candle weight × load (load as a percentage of total candle weight, CSI's convention). A 200 g candle at 8% holds 16 g.

Take two oils from the same range (worked examples — use your own sales records, not hopes): a faster scent at 125 candles a month and a slower one at 40. The faster oil uses 2.00 kg a month; the slower one 0.64 kg. Use an average of the last three to six months, and separate out festive spikes: a Diwali month is not a normal month.

If your candles of that scent are below the number in your row, a 5 kg pack is more than three months of stock. Notice that a higher load makes bulk easier to justify on paper: a 10% candle uses oil faster. That is not a reason to keep a higher load than your test needs; if 8% passes, plan bulk on 8% (the load question is the lower-load test design post).

Step two: the discount against the cash it ties up

Your supplier's offer, as a worked example: ₹4,000.00 a kilo in 1 kg packs, or ₹3,600.00 a kilo in a 5 kg pack (10% off). One 5 kg pack costs ₹18,000.00 against five 1 kg packs at ₹20,000.00: a saving of ₹2,000.00. On the day you buy it, it also takes ₹14,000.00 more cash out of the business than a single 1 kg pack.

That cash has a cost: interest on a loan or overdraft, or what the money would have earned elsewhere in the business. Price it at your own monthly rate; 1.5% is the worked example. The extra cash tied up on average is what matters. Drawing down a 5 kg pack, your average stock is half a pack, ₹9,000.00; buying 1 kg at a time it is half a kilo, ₹2,000.00. The difference, ₹7,000.00, sits on your shelf for as many months as the pack lasts.

Holding cost per pack = extra average cash × monthly rate × months of cover. Net saving per pack = discount − holding cost.

Read down the holding-cost column: it never comes near the ₹2,000.00 discount until consumption is tiny. The money-only break-even sits at 0.26 kg a month for a 10% discount, 0.56 kg for a 5% discount (₹1,000.00 saved per pack) and 0.16 kg for a 15% discount (₹3,000.00). In other words, on cash cost alone, almost any discount "pays". If that were the whole story, everyone would buy 5 kg of everything. It is not the whole story; the last column is.

Step three: time on the shelf, the real limit

Every month a 5 kg pack sits on the shelf is a month in which something can change: you drop the scent, a customer favourite changes, you reformulate the range, the oil's character shifts after repeated opening, or cash is needed for something better. CSI does not publish a shelf life for its oils, and we will not invent one: ask your supplier what they state for the exact oil, and store it cool, dark and tightly sealed. Repeatedly opening a large, half-empty container exposes the oil to more air (a tendency); many makers decant a working bottle and keep the bulk sealed (judgement).

You cannot price those risks precisely, so price the worst plausible case instead: what is left on the shelf if you stop using the oil part-way through the pack.

The last numbers are the useful ones. For the slower oil, the 5 kg pack only pays if the chance of stranding the month-3 remainder is under 9.6%, about one in ten. Few makers can say a scent selling 40 a month is that safe for eight months. For the faster oil the bar is 32.6%, still demanding, but the exposure is shorter and the pack is re-bought before it ages. That is the logic behind a cover cap: it replaces an unknowable risk with a simple limit. Three months is our judgement; a maker with a fixed, long-running range may accept four, and one who rotates seasonally should stay at two.

The festive trap

Bulk is most tempting before Diwali, when use spikes. If festive weeks run at 2× normal (worked example), the faster oil empties a 5 kg pack in 1.25 months, which looks safe; but after the festival, use drops back and the next pack bought at the peak can sit into the new year. Size festive bulk on the festive run you have orders or history for, and buy the rest in normal packs. Range-level stock and cash questions sit in the ₹1 lakh bulk-inventory risk post and the MOQ against working-capital post.

What the discount does to the candle

Bring it back to one candle. At 16 g of oil, a 10% discount on a ₹4,000.00 oil takes ₹6.40 off each candle's fragrance line. Here is the worked 200 g candle with CSI Luxury Soy Wax Chunks, an Eco C2 wick and your own jar and box as labelled worked examples. Materials only; labour, freight, GST and marketing excluded.

A 10% discount on the oil is ₹6.40 a candle, 2.3% of materials: worth having on a fast oil (₹800.00 a month on the faster worked oil, before holding cost), not worth an eight-month bet on a slow one. It is also a reminder of scale: on this candle the jar line is bigger than the oil line, and a fragrance discount does not touch it. If your aim is the biggest per-candle saving, compare this with a load test on the same oil (the 10% to 8% saving post) and with the cluster's order of attack in the fragrance-share hub.

What CSI sells: 1 kg is the top, and not always cheaper

CSI's fragrance oils are listed from 15 g (on most) up to 1 kg; no listed CSI oil comes in a pack above 1 kg. If you use more than a kilo a month of one oil, ask on WhatsApp for a price above 1 kg; we do not publish one, and this page does not assume a discount. What we can show is the ladder you can buy today, and it is not uniform.

Across the full list, 78 CSI oils are sold in both 500 g and 1 kg. On 34 the kilo is cheaper than two 500 g packs (by ₹8.00 on Citrus Lemon, ₹236.00 on Eucalyptus Spearmint); on 24 it costs exactly the same; on 20 it costs more, usually by ₹1.00 (Jasmine is one) but by ₹1,699.20 on Sage and Cedarwood and Saffron Cedarwood. We state these as listed, without guessing why. The practical rule: look up the per-gram price of your oil at each size before you assume the bigger bottle wins, and size the pack to your cover, not to the ladder.

Before you sign for 5 kg: the oil, the lot and the storage

A 5 kg pack multiplies whatever is true about the oil by five. Make sure what is true is good.

Five CSI ladders, five different answers

Five oils chosen to show the range of CSI pack ladders on 4 October 2026: two where the kilo is a real step, one where it is small, one flat and one where the kilo costs more. Chosen on page statements, price and stock; CSI publishes no throw data. The last column is the oil cost of a 200 g candle at 8% at each pack's price.

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