I Need 500 × 150 g Candles at 8% Fragrance — How Many Kilograms of Fragrance Oil Will the Order Consume?

6 kg in the candles

The figure uses CSI's convention: load is a share of the finished candle weight. The finished weight is what the customer receives, 150 g. So each candle holds 150 × 0.08 = 12 g of oil and 150 − 12 = 138 g of wax. Scale that to 500 and you have the net figure for the order.

Six kilograms is the quantity that leaves your bench inside saleable candles. It is the right number for costing a candle and for telling a client what the order contains. It is not yet the number to buy, because production uses oil that never reaches a jar. The next section accounts for it.

It is worth checking the wax figure against the wax you plan to order, because the two mistakes that distort oil consumption usually start there. If the 75 kg of finished candle is read as 75 kg of wax, the wax order is 6 kg too high and the oil order, taken as 8% of it, is 6 kg in a 81 kg mix, a 7.41% candle. Not treating finished weight as wax weight and calculating wax for 750 × 150 g cover the wax side of that error.

The consumption ledger

Consumption is everything the order uses up, whether it ships or not. Laying it out as a ledger makes each line visible and lets you replace each assumption with a measured figure after the run:

Pour loss is the line that most surprises makers. The oil is mixed into wax, and wax clings to everything it touches, so some of every melt stays behind. Candles that sink and need topping up take more mix again. Makers commonly plan 3–5% extra for pour loss and test burns. At 500 candles, the difference between 3% and 5% is 120 g of oil, ten candles' worth. The only way to know your figure is to measure it, which is the point of the method below.

Test candles are counted in whole units. Four is a reasonable number for an oil and wax you have approved before: one early burn, one full-length burn, one retained reference and one spare for a client or a problem. For a new recipe, a properly sized test round uses far more, and development and QC samples at 1,000 candles builds a larger programme. Any breakage or rejects that are remade also consume oil; if you expect them, add them as units.

Fill drift: the hidden consumer

Most makers pour to a fill line, not onto a scale, and a line is not precise. Consumption follows the weight actually poured: oil consumed = candles × actual average weight × load. If the fill creeps up, the oil creeps up with it, and so does the wax. Over 500 candles, a gram or two per candle adds up:

A 5 g overfill, which is hard to see by eye, costs 200 g of oil across the run, ₹910.00 in Cinnamon Vanilla, and 2.3 kg of wax. An underfill saves oil but ships lighter candles than the label says. Neither is a disaster on its own, but both make your consumption figure wrong. Weigh one poured candle in every twenty against the target, and adjust the fill line if it drifts. Filling jars to a specific line covers setting a line from a weighed pour.

The other hidden consumer is the load convention. If a batch sheet says "8% of wax", the maker weighs 69 kg of wax and adds 5,520 g of oil. Consumption looks lower, and the order even appears to come in under budget, but every candle is 7.41%, not 8%. The real consumption figure for an 8% candle is always candles × finished weight × 0.08. Ordering from finished weight, not wax weight explains the conversion.

Consumption day by day

Five hundred candles is several days of production for most small workshops. Planning the draw-down tells you when each bottle is opened, when the last one runs low, and whether a late top-up would arrive in time. Here is a five-day run of 100 candles a day, with the same 3% loss each day and the four test candles poured on day one:

By the end of day four you have used about 5 kg, so the sixth kilo is opened on day five and the small top-up bottles are needed for the last few candles. That is the reason to buy every bottle before day one. If a top-up has to be ordered on day four, it arrives after the run has stopped. For a run spread over weeks rather than days, setting a reorder level for a 16 g-a-candle bestseller applies the same draw-down logic to inventory.

Buying 6.23 kg

The cheapest in-stock cover for 6,228 g of Cinnamon Vanilla is 6 × 1 kg + 2 × 100 g + 2 × 15 g, 6,230 g for ₹28,508.80. Its 1 kg is ₹4.55 a gram, its 500 g ₹4.60 and its 100 g ₹4.84, so the kilo is the right unit and the small bottles are only for the final 228 g. For a single quantity above the listed sizes, ask on WhatsApp for a quote; no discount figure is published.

The wax and wicks follow the same consumption logic. Wax is 69,000 g net, 71,070 g with the same 3% loss, and 71,622 g with the four test candles (4 × 138 g). Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 is priced at ₹507.40 a kilo at every bag size and is rated up to 10% fragrance, so an 8% candle sits inside the ceiling.

That is ₹136.10 per saleable candle for oil, wax and wick, before jars, labour, packaging, freight and GST. Jars are your own 150 g container; fill weights for most CSI jars are not published, so weigh a test pour. At 72 kg of wax and over 6 kg of oil, a WhatsApp quote on the whole order is worth asking for. Wick size for your jar is not published; confirm it in the test candles.

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