I Can Save ₹40 per Kg by Buying 100 Kg of Wax — How Many Candles Must I Produce Before the Saving Becomes Meaningful?

₹40 a kilo is ₹7.73 a candle — meaningful only after it clears three costs

₹40 a kilo on 100 kg is ₹4,000.00, and it is tempting to stop there. But you do not earn ₹4,000.00 on the day the wax arrives. You earn it slowly, in tiny amounts, every time a candle is poured. A 200 g candle at an 8% fragrance load holds 184 g of wax, and with a 5% working allowance for pour loss and test burns you buy 193.2 g of wax per saleable candle. At ₹40 a kilo off, that is ₹7.73 per candle (₹7.36 on the wax actually in the jar). One 100 kg lot makes about 518 candles, so the full ₹4,000.00 arrives only when the last of those is poured.

Meanwhile, the bigger order has costs of its own. You pay for all 100 kg on day one, so the cash sits in wax for months — that has a cost. If the cheaper price comes from a new supplier, you must qualify the wax before you trust it with production — that test kit is a one-off cost. And 100 kg needs somewhere cool, dry and off the floor — perhaps a one-off rack or pallet. The saving becomes meaningful only when the candles you produce have repaid all three, and there is still something left before the lot runs out.

In the worked example on this page — current wax at ₹599.00 a kilo, the reader's 100 kg price at ₹559.00 — the answer splits by volume. With the same wax from the same supplier, only the carrying cost comes off and the deal is positive at any steady volume: net ₹1,829.97 at 100 candles a month, ₹3,457.49 at 400. With a new supplier, the test kit and an example ₹500.00 storage cost come off too: at 100 candles a month the deal loses ₹211.11; at 200 a month it pays back after about 405 candles and nets ₹873.90; at 400 a month it pays back after 334 and nets ₹1,416.41.

The per-candle arithmetic, line by line

Start with the candle you actually sell. In this example it is a 200 g Sandalwood candle at 8%: 16 g of oil and 184 g of wax, in a White Matte Glass Jar with an Eco Thin C1 wick. Materials only — labour, packaging, freight and GST are excluded and are yours to add.

The ₹40 discount takes 2.8% off the materials in this candle. That is worth having, but notice what it is next to: the jar alone is ₹70.80, the oil ₹80.43. A one-gram change in fill weight or a fraction of a percent in fragrance load moves the candle's cost by a similar amount. Choosing on cost per kg versus cost per saleable candle explains why the wax price is only one line of the decision.

The three costs the saving must repay first

1 · Carrying cost. You pay ₹55,900.00 for 100 kg today. As you use it down steadily, the average stock is about half the lot. Charge that half an example 1.5% a month — your own cost of money, which you replace — for the months it takes to use the lot. The slower you produce, the longer it sits and the bigger this line becomes. 2 · Qualification. If the cheaper wax is from a new supplier, it has to pass a bench comparison against your current wax before it touches an order. That kit is priced below. 3 · Storage. If 100 kg needs sealed bins, a rack or a pallet you do not already own, that is a one-off cost. This page uses ₹500.00 as an example only; replace it with your real figure, or zero.

Payback in candles is (one-off costs + carrying cost) ÷ saving per candle. For the new-supplier case at 200 candles a month: (₹1,541.08 + ₹500.00 + ₹1,085.02) ÷ ₹7.73 = 405 candles. The lot holds 518, so roughly the last 113 candles carry the real profit. At 100 candles a month the costs never get repaid inside the lot — the deal only becomes positive if you count a second 100 kg order, which means committing to the new wax for most of a year.

If the saving comes from a new wax: the bench test it must pass

A ₹40 discount on a wax you have never poured is not a saving yet; it is a hypothesis. The only way to turn it into one is a side-by-side test against your current wax as the control. Four candles of each — three to burn, one for the shelf — poured the same day with the same oil lot, wick and jar, is the labelled working minimum used throughout this series. What to retest when a new supplier is ₹60 a kilo cheaper covers the full change-control list; here is the minimum that protects a 100 kg decision.

Pay attention to the last two rows. A wax that saves ₹7.73 a candle but adds even a few cosmetic rejects has given the saving back: at ₹259.98 of materials per candle, one rejected candle wipes out the saving on about 34 good ones. Whether a dearer wax with fewer rejects improves margin makes that trade-off explicit.

The priced bench kit, and what CSI's own bags offer

Here is the qualification kit priced with CSI's listed packs, using Luxury Soy Wax Chunks as the current wax. The candidate wax is the supplier's sample and is not priced. If you already hold your current wax, delete the control-wax line.

Notice the control-wax line: 772.8 g of Chunks is cheaper as two 500 g bags (₹598.00) than as one 1 kg bag (₹599.00). That is the scale of pack-size difference you will find on CSI's container soy waxes, and it runs both ways. The listed catalogue simply does not have a ₹40-a-kilo step on any soy wax; the largest is Natural Soy Pearl's ₹25.20 at 5 kg, worth ₹4.87 a candle and available without a single extra kilo on your shelf.

The decision rule: when ₹40 a kilo is worth taking

Use the rule below once you have your real monthly volume, your real cost of money and, if the wax is new, a passed scoring sheet. Each line is a yes or no.

For the worked example: a maker pouring 200 Sandalwood candles a month on the same wax from the same supplier should take the offer — net ₹2,914.98 after carrying cost, 2.8% off materials. The same maker switching to a new supplier should take it only after the bench test passes, and would pay back after about 405 candles. A maker at 100 a month should decline a new-supplier offer and instead take the free step: if the wax is Natural Soy Pearl, buy it in 5 kg or 10 kg bags at ₹424.80 a kilo; if it is Luxury Soy Wax Chunks, buy two 5 kg bags (₹5,990.00) rather than one 10 kg bag.

Related bulk-buying decisions

This post turns one fixed saving into a payback count. The 100 kg MOQ post asks whether your volume justifies the minimum at all; 25 kg today versus 100 kg at a discount compares the cash paths month by month; the 1,000-candle order tests whether wholesale wax moves COGS enough to matter on a single big job; and the procurement-system capstone folds all of it into reorder points and pack choices. For the full landed-cost view, including shipping, see the true commercial cost of a soy wax.

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