I Have a Large Candle Order with a Strict Delivery Date — How Much Extra Raw-Material Inventory Should I Keep in Case of Rejects or Supplier Delays?

Build the buffer material by material

The example is a corporate Diwali order of 800 candles, 200 g each, delivered on 30 October 2026 (an example date, nine days before Diwali on 8 November). The candle uses 16 g of Cinnamon Vanilla Fragrance Oil (8%) and 184 g of Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464, which is rated up to 10% by the wax maker. It is poured into a White Matte Glass Jar with an Eco Candle Wicks Thin C1. Each material fails in a different way, so each gets its own buffer:

The reject rate is the number that matters most, and it has to be yours. Count the candles you would not ship from your last few batches: sinkholes you could not fix, wet spots on the glass, off-centre wicks, cracked jars, scent that tested weak. Divide by the number poured. If you have never measured it, use 5% as a planning figure and say so, and measure it on the first 100 candles of this order. A new jar or a new scent usually runs higher than your normal rate until you have settled it in. How Do I Include Wax Spillage, Leftover Fragrance, Broken Jars and Rejected Candles When Calculating My Actual Production Cost? covers how to cost spills, leftovers and rejects into your normal pricing.

Three buffer plans, priced

The table prices four ways to buy for the same 800 candles in whole CSI packs: exact, lean (3% rejects), standard (5%) and cautious (8%). Oil is bought in 100 g, 500 g and 1 kg packs, and wax in 5 kg and 10 kg bags. For CSI 464 those two bag sizes cost the same per kilo, at ₹507.40. The last column shows how many candles the plan can actually make before its shortest material runs out.

The standard plan costs ₹17,747.20 more than the exact plan, or ₹22.18 for each ordered candle. The cautious plan costs ₹22,160.40 more. Notice that the exact plan can't make 800 candles at all. With the 4% pour-loss allowance applied, its oil and wax fall short before the last jar is filled. Buying exactly the calculated need for a dated order means planning to be short.

The weakest-link check

After you have sized each buffer, turn every material into a candle count and look for the smallest. In the standard plan, the oil makes 841 candles after the pour-loss allowance, the wax 862, the jars 860 and the wicks 890. The Cinnamon Vanilla oil is the limit, at 41 candles of headroom. If rejects run above 5.1%, that is where the order stops. Topping up that one material raises the ceiling for the whole order. Topping up any other material raises nothing.

Supplier delays: buy time, not stock

For a one-off dated order, a supplier delay isn't solved by holding more of the same thing. It is solved by having everything on your shelf early enough that a late parcel doesn't matter. CSI does not publish lead times or stock quantities. For an order of this size, your first step is to message us on WhatsApp with the full quantities and ask us to confirm them before you agree the client's date. I've Received My First Large Corporate Candle Order — Which Raw Materials Have the Longest Lead Times and Should be Secured First? ranks which materials to secure first.

Read the last row. Every material needs to be on your shelf around three and a half weeks before delivery in this example, and ordering has to happen before that. The five-day finished-and-waiting buffer is the cheapest insurance on the page. It costs nothing to buy, only discipline to keep. If a delivery is late, it eats into those five days instead of the delivery date. I Need Several Kilograms of One Fragrance for a Corporate Order — Should I Test the Bulk Fragrance Batch Against My Original Sample Before Production? explains why the test pour from the bulk oil comes before production, not during it.

Is the buffer worth it?

Set the cost of each plan against what a shortfall would cost you. The gift price is an example of ₹799.00. On a dated corporate order, being short is rarely just the missing candles, though. It can mean a late delivery on the whole order, an unhappy client and no repeat order next year. Here is the simple version:

The standard plan is priced for a 5% reject rate, so at 5% it comes in almost exactly on target. The lean plan saves ₹5,711.20 against standard, and a 5% reject rate would leave it short. Most of the buffer money also comes back as usable stock, while a shortfall is a straight loss. On a strict-date order, buy at least the standard plan, and base it on your measured reject rate once you have one.

Once this order ships, write down the real reject rate, the real breakage and how long each material took to arrive. Those three numbers turn next year's buffer from an estimate into a calculation. For ongoing production rather than one order, safety stock works differently. See I Have Enough Raw Materials for 500 Candles but Sales Are Growing Unpredictably — How Much Safety Stock Should I Maintain? and I'm Growing Quickly but Don't Want to Run Out of Wax — How Do I Set a Reorder Point Based on Monthly Consumption and Supplier Lead Time?. For approval steps that cut rejects before they happen, see I'm Accepting a 1,000-Piece Custom Candle Order — What Should be Fully Tested and Approved Before I Spend Money on Bulk Raw Materials?.

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