I Need 1,000 × 200 g Candles at 8% Fragrance — How Many Kilograms of Fragrance Oil Should I Order if I Also Need Development and QC Samples?

16 kg for the run

CSI's convention is that load is a share of the finished candle weight. Each 200 g candle at 8% contains 16 g of oil and 184 g of wax, so a thousand contain 16,000 g of oil and 184,000 g of wax. Add a working allowance for pour loss. Makers commonly plan 3–5% for pour loss and test burns; this page uses 3% for pour loss and counts every test and sample separately, which is more accurate at this scale.

At 16 kg, a convention mistake is expensive. Taking 8% of the 184 kg of wax gives 14,720 g, a real load of 7.41% and 1,280 g short, which is more than all the samples on this page combined. Ordering from finished weight covers the conversion, and the wax side of 1,000 × 200 g at 8% covers the 184 kg.

The sample programme, counted in candles

Samples at this scale do five different jobs, happen at different times, and some of them leave your bench. Treating them as one vague percentage is how makers either forget them or double-count them. Here is a programme for a thousand-candle order, with every line counted in candles. The counts are working assumptions; change them to suit your client and your process, and the grams follow.

The oil screen happens before you have chosen the oil, so it uses different oils. A 15 g tester of each candidate pours three 50 g test pots at 8% (4 g oil + 46 g wax each) with 3 g spare. The Heart Cutout Velvet Jar is listed with a 50 g wax capacity, so it takes a 50 g pot. For three oud profiles, the testers cost ₹401.02.

The development matrix fixes load and wick for the chosen oil. At 7%, 8% and 9%, a 200 g candle takes 14 g, 16 g and 18 g of oil and 186 g, 184 g and 182 g of wax. Three wick options at each load, two candles per cell, is 18 candles: 6 × (14 + 16 + 18) = 288 g of oil and 3,312 g of wax. All three loads are inside the stated ceilings of Luxury Soy Wax Chunks (13%) and CSI 464 (10%). Wick size per jar diameter is not published; this matrix is how you find it. How many wicks to buy for a wick test covers the wick count.

Client samples are finished candles that leave your bench. Count them as production units poured to the final recipe, not as tests. Retained QC samples are one candle kept from each pour batch, labelled with the date and oil bottle, so that if a customer complains about candle 734 you can burn its batch-mate. QC burn tests are candles taken from production and burned, to catch a drift before it reaches hundreds of units. Whether client samples belong in procurement and approval tests for custom orders go further on the client side.

Adding samples to production

The stack runs in time order: the screen, the development oil, the production oil with its pour loss, and the samples that are drawn during production. Only the development matrix happens before you know the recipe; everything after it uses the approved recipe at 16 g per candle.

The samples come to 848 g, 5.3% of the net. That is close to a flat 5%, which is why some makers simply add 5% and move on. The counted version is better for two reasons. It tells you when each gram is needed, which decides how to stage the purchase. And it survives a change in the order: if the client moves to 1,500 candles, the QC lines grow with the batches and the development line does not, whereas a flat 5% grows everything.

Buying in stages

The programme splits the purchase naturally. Stage 1 is the screen (a 15 g tester of each candidate), then the development matrix and the client samples for the chosen oil: 288 g + 80 g = 368 g, covered by four 100 g bottles (₹2,360.00) with 32 g left. Stage 2 is everything after approval: production, pour loss and QC, 16,960 g less the 32 g already on the shelf, which is 16,928 g: 16 × 1 kg + 1 × 500 g + 4 × 100 g + 2 × 15 g (₹96,471.04).

Staging costs ₹104.00 more than the practical single order, because stage 2 has to round its own quantity to bottles. In return, only ₹2,360.00 is committed before approval instead of ₹98,727.04. The strict cheapest single order uses 500 g bottles, because this oil's 500 g is priced 50 paise below half a kilo; it saves ₹17.00 over the practical order and adds 17 bottles. Take the kilos.

The priced order

Samples need wax and wicks too. Wax is 184,000 g net, 189,520 g with 3% loss, plus 3,312 g for the development matrix and 6,440 g for 35 sample candles at 184 g (5 client, 20 retained, 10 burns): 199,272 g. Wicks are 1,000 + 18 + 35 = 1,053, with the development matrix split across three wick options.

That is ₹225.18 per saleable candle with the whole sample programme absorbed, before jars, labour, packaging, freight and GST. Two hundred kilos of wax and seventeen of oil is well past the listed pack sizes (oil up to 1 kg per listing, Chunks up to 10 kg bags), so ask for a quote on the full order; no discount figure is published. The 5 kg bag is listed at ₹599.00 a kilo and the 10 kg at ₹599.90, which is why the list uses 5 kg bags. If the development matrix uses a second wick type such as Thick C2, buy those six separately.

The sample programme sits on top of two simpler calculations: weighing the oil for a single batch and setting a reorder level once a scent becomes a bestseller. Both use the same 16 g a candle.

Frequently asked questions