When Should I Move From 100 g to 1 Kg Fragrance Oil Purchases?

The per-gram ladder, from the sample bottle to the kilo

CSI's oil pages list up to five sizes — 15 g, 50 g, 100 g, 500 g and 1 kg — and the pack prices sit next to each other in a dropdown that invites you to read them as a discount ladder. They are not always a ladder. Divide each price by its weight and the real shape appears: on some oils the per-gram rate falls steadily to the kilo, on others it stops falling at 50 g or 100 g and then runs flat all the way up. The table below does that division for six oils that all carry the full five-pack range.

Three patterns are worth naming. The steady faller: British Rose drops at every rung, ₹6.29/g to ₹4.25/g to ₹3.42/g to ₹3.19/g to ₹3.07/g. The early flattener: Apple Cinnamon is ₹4.74/g from the 50 g pack onward, so every pack above 50 g is the same rate. The late flattener: Sandalwood falls to ₹5.03/g at 100 g and stays there. If your range is built on the second or third kind, moving to kilos changes your cash position and nothing else.

What each pack does to the oil cost in one candle

Convert the ladder into the only figure that reaches your costing sheet: the oil inside one candle. At a 200 g wax fill and an 8% load of wax weight that is 16 g of oil per candle. Where a wax ceiling and an oil page's stated range differ, the lower figure governs — Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 states up to 10% and the British Rose page states up to 10% of total wax weight for soy, so 8% sits comfortably inside both.

The last two columns are the honest answer to the title question. On British Rose, ten 100 g packs cost ₹354.00 more than the kilo. On Citrus Lemon the gap is ₹168.00, on Roasted Coffee ₹162.00 and on Lavender ₹179.00. On Apple Cinnamon and Sandalwood it is ₹0.00. Those are real numbers, they are just not life-changing ones — and none of them justifies holding a scent you are not selling.

Now look one column to the left, at the 15 g figure. British Rose costs ₹100.69 of oil per candle in the sample bottle against ₹54.75 at 100 g — a difference of ₹45.94 per candle, roughly ten times the entire 100 g-to-1 kg step. If you are still buying 15 g or 50 g bottles for production rather than for sampling, that is where your money is going, and fixing it costs almost nothing in cash or in risk. A 15 g bottle does not even fill one 200 g candle at 8%; it is a smell test.

The usage test: how fast is this one scent actually moving?

Pack size questions get easier the moment you stop asking about grams and start asking about months of cover. Cover is simple arithmetic: grams in the pack ÷ (candles a month of that scent × 16 g). One kilo divided by a maker pouring 20 candles a month of a single fragrance is 3.1 months. Divided by a maker pouring 5 of that scent a month it is 12.5 months — a year of one bottle, in a country where a store room can sit above 40°C for weeks.

The working rule that falls out of the table: buy the pack that gives you about two months of cover for that scent, and let the kilo arrive only when a single fragrance is pulling roughly 30 candles a month on its own. Two months is long enough that you are not reordering constantly and short enough that a scent going out of fashion, or a jar change, or a seasonal swing does not leave you holding a bottle you cannot use. It also keeps oil moving through storage rather than sitting through a full Indian summer.

There is a second reason to think in months rather than grams: CSI's fragrance oil pages do not publish a shelf life, and this page will not invent one. General practice with fragrance oils is to keep them sealed, cool, out of direct sunlight, and to use them within a sensible window rather than stockpiling years of a scent. If you want CSI's own guidance on storage or age for a specific oil, ask on WhatsApp +91 7397976926, where MSDS and IFRA documentation is also available on request.

Your load changes the answer more than the pack does

Everything above assumes 16 g of oil per candle, which is an 8% load on a 200 g wax fill. Change the load and every figure on the page moves. At 6% the same kilo fills about 83 candles; at 10% it fills 50; at 13% — the ceiling stated on the Luxury Soy Wax Chunks page, where the page also asks you to test-burn thoroughly at that level — it fills about 38. That is a bigger swing than any pack decision in this article.

Two practical consequences. First, settle your load before you settle your pack: a range that runs at 10% burns through stock a quarter faster than one at 8%, and that alone can turn a 500 g decision into a kilo decision. Second, do not treat a kilo as permission to be generous. Pouring at a higher load because “there is plenty in the bottle” is how a maker discovers a wax ceiling the hard way, and it quietly removes the saving that justified the pack in the first place.

What a kilo costs you that the per-gram rate does not show

Cash, concentrated into single scents

Six 100 g packs of the six oils compared on this page cost ₹2,549.24. Six kilos of the same oils cost ₹24,629.40 — ₹22,080.16 more, all of it committed before a single customer has voted. That money is not lost, but it is not available either, and in the weeks before a festive season it is competing with jars, wax and wicks. A brand that puts its whole oil budget into kilos of six scents has bought certainty about the wrong thing.

Range risk: the bottle you cannot sell out of

A 100 g pack of a scent that flops is 6.25 candles of misjudgement. A kilo is 62.5. Most small Indian brands discover after a season that two or three scents carry the range and the rest are decoration — and those two or three are rarely the ones the founder expected. Buy kilos of the proven ones and 100 g of the experiments, and your inventory mistakes stay small and cheap.

Handling: a kilo does not pour like a 100 g bottle

Practical bench reality: weighing 16 g out of a full kilo bottle is awkward, and repeated pouring from a large container means more openings, more headspace and more chance of a spill on a hot day. General practice is to decant a working amount into a smaller sealed bottle and keep the kilo closed. Weigh, never eyeball — a Candle Making Weighing Scale is ₹354.00, though stock on it runs low, and any 0.1 g kitchen scale does the same job. Guessing a dose by eye out of a kilo is how a batch ends up over the wax's stated ceiling.

Heat and storage, which are not CSI costs

Freight, storage and packaging are your own figures, not CSI's — the store does not publish delivery rates and this page will not estimate them. What is worth saying is that a kilo commits you to storing a litre-scale bottle somewhere cool and dark for months. In Mumbai, Chennai or Kolkata in June that is a real constraint, not a formality. If the honest answer is that you have nowhere suitable, the 500 g pack is the better buy even when the kilo is a shade cheaper per gram.

Worked example: a six-scent range decides its packs

What the example does not do is tell this brand to buy six kilos because it pours 120 candles a month. That basket would cost ₹24,629.40 and would leave Sandalwood sitting in a cupboard for a year. How much fragrance oil a candle business needs and buying fragrance oils in bulk in India cover the volume side; this page is only about which bottle to put in the basket.

Five ways the 100 g to 1 kg decision goes wrong

1. Assuming every oil rewards the kilo

Two of the six oils on this page are the same per gram at 100 g and at 1 kg. Check the rate yourself: pack price ÷ pack weight, on the product page, before the pack size feels like a decision about maturity. The fragrance oil wholesale buyer's guide covers what to ask for beyond the listed packs.

2. Buying kilos across a wide range

A range of twelve scents at 1 kg each is a warehouse, not a brand. Width multiplies stock: every extra scent is another minimum pack sitting in the cupboard. Narrow the range first, then buy deep on what is left.

3. Treating the sample bottle as a production pack

The 15 g and 50 g bottles exist so you can smell and test-pour without committing. Used for production they cost ₹45.94 a candle more than the 100 g pack on British Rose. Sample small, produce at 100 g or above.

4. Buying a kilo for a festive scent you have not cured and burned

Seasonal scents are exactly where makers over-commit, because the deadline feels tight. With Diwali on 8 November 2026 and pours finishing about mid-October, there is still time in September to buy 100 g, pour, cure and burn before the kilo goes in the basket. Skipping that step to save a week is how a kilo of the wrong gourmand ends up in storage until next year.

5. Forgetting that the load moved

If you raise a range from 8% to 10% for a stronger throw, a kilo that used to be 62.5 candles is now 50, and your cover drops by a fifth without a single extra sale. Re-run the cover arithmetic whenever the load, the fill weight or the jar changes.

Two tests, in this order: does the per-gram rate actually fall at 1 kg, and does that one scent turn the kilo over in about two months? Buy the kilo only where both answers are yes. Everything else — including the temptation to buy six kilos because it feels like a real business — costs more than it saves.

Frequently asked questions