I Have 1 Kg of Oud Fragrance Oil — How Many 200 g Candles Can I Produce at 6%, 8% and 10% Fragrance Loads?

Three loads, three counts

This series measures the load as a share of the finished candle. A 200 g candle at 8% is 16 g of oil and 184 g of wax, and the two weigh 200 g together. The dose per candle scales directly with the load, so the candle count scales inversely. Here is the full working for one kilo:

The step from 6% to 8% costs 21 candles; the step from 8% to 10% costs 12. The first step is bigger because each gram of dose matters more when the dose is small. For a maker selling oud candles at a premium, those 33 candles between 6% and 10% are a lot of revenue to trade for a load that may or may not smell stronger in the room. That is the reason to test before you commit, set out further down.

If your 6%, 8% or 10% is measured against the wax rather than the finished candle, the numbers shift. "10 g of oil per 100 g of wax" on 180 g of wax is 18 g of oil, a true load of 9.09% in a 198 g candle, and the kilo then fills 55 candles, not 50. Neither convention is wrong, but mixing them between the test and the production run changes the candle you sell. The lavender version of this page shows the two conventions side by side.

The wax runs the other way

A higher load needs more oil per candle and less wax per candle, and it also fills fewer candles. Both effects cut the wax you need to go with a fixed kilo of oil. The difference is large enough to change which bags you buy:

At 6% you need about 1.76 times the wax you need at 10%, because the kilo is spread across 33 more candles. If you buy wax before you fix the load, you will either run short at 6% or be left with several kilos at 10%. CSI 464 is the cheaper wax per kilo (₹507.40 against ₹599.00), and at 6% or 8% it has headroom under its 10% rating. At 10% it is at its stated maximum with no headroom at all, which is why the Chunks, rated up to 13%, are the safer container wax for a 10% formula. Those ratings are the wax makers' formulation maximums, not targets. Counting 200 g candles from 10 kg of wax at 10% works the wax-first direction.

Cost per candle, by oud and by load

Material cost here is oil plus wax (the wax weight changes with the load), one wick and one jar. It excludes labour, packaging, freight and GST. At 8%, White Royal Oud costs ₹57.15 more per candle in oil than Woody Oud. At 10%, the gap widens to ₹71.44. A premium oud at a high load can put the fragrance alone above ₹160.00 a candle, so the load decision is also a pricing decision.

There is a second way to read the kilo. Its price is fixed, so the more candles it fills, the less oil each carries. At 6% a kilo of Woody Oud is spread across 83 candles; at 10%, across 50. The kilo's price per candle rises by two-thirds as the load goes from 6% to 10%, exactly in proportion to the dose.

Choosing the load without guessing

CSI does not publish throw measurements, cure times or recommended loads for any oil, and we will not pretend a particular oud "performs best at 10%". What we can give you is a cheap way to find out in your own wax, jar and room. A 50 g test pot at 6% takes 3 g of oil, at 8% 4 g and at 10% 5 g. That is 12 g for all three loads, so one 15 g tester covers a full three-load test with 3 g to spare.

Three priced orders for one kilo

Once the load is fixed, here is everything the kilo of Woody Oud needs to become candles, at each load, with the same 5% pour-loss allowance on the oil and the wax. Wicks and White Matte Glass Jars are bought at one per candle plus one spare, rounded to real packs.

The oil line is the same at every load because the kilo is fixed. The candle count, the wax, the wicks and the jars all move with the load. That is the practical meaning of "load is a formula decision": it changes the whole order, not just the fragrance line. Wick size for the White Matte Glass Jar is not published, and its fill weight is not published either, so confirm both with a weighed, burned test candle.

If you are planning oud as one scent among several, the per-scent version of this page is a 500-candle order split between lavender, rose and oud. If the kilo is the first of several, the 5 kg reorder calculation shows when to order the next one, and the kilo break-even page explains why oud's kilo buys stock, not a discount. The coffee version shows the same arithmetic at 150 g.

If you are working in the buying direction instead, starting from a candle count rather than a bottle, 100 × 200 g candles at 6% and 100 × 200 g candles at 10% show the same loads as purchase quantities.

Frequently asked questions