I Need 500 × 75 g Wax Melt Packs at 10% Fragrance — How Much Fragrance Oil Should I Buy Including Production Wastage?

The allowance stack, step by step

Start with the finished pack. A 75 g pack at 10% is 7.5 g of oil and 67.5 g of wax. That split holds whether the pack is six cubes in a clamshell, a single bar or a heart-shaped container. CSI, like most candle suppliers, quotes fragrance load as a share of the finished weight: oil = weight × load, wax = weight − oil. Multiply by 500 and you have the net requirement, 3,750 g of oil and 33,750 g of wax. That is 37,500 g of scented melt, exactly what the customers receive.

The net figure is only the floor. Two things consume scented melt without becoming a sellable pack. First, packs you pour on purpose and never sell: the first-batch check, a retained sample from each production day and a pack or two for photographs. Second, production loss: the skin left in the pouring jug, the drips on the funnel, the cavity that set with a crater and went back into the pot at a lower yield, and the last centimetre of the melter you cannot tip out. The order of operations matters because loss applies to everything you pour, test packs included.

The two allowances together add 7.1% to the net oil. That is higher than the 5% you may have had in your head, because the test packs are counted first and then the loss is taken on the larger pour. Doing it the other way round, loss on 500 packs and then 10 test packs on top, gives 4,012.50 g, which is 3.75 g less. The difference is small here. It grows with the number of test packs, and the principle is the same whatever you pour: any unit you pour can be lost.

Three ways the oil order goes wrong

Each of these errors produces a figure that looks reasonable on paper. Each shows up during the production run rather than while you are planning it.

The first shortcut deserves a closer look because it is the most common. "10% fragrance" can mean 10% of the finished weight or 10% of the wax weight, and the two give different candles. On 33,750 g of wax, 10% of the wax is 3,375 g of oil, and the finished melt is then 9.09% oil. To hit a true 10% on a known wax weight, oil = wax × 0.10 ÷ 0.90 = 3,750 g. CSI's pages and this whole series use the finished-weight convention. Luxury Soy Wax Chunks' 13% rating and CSI 464's 10% rating are stated the same way, so the load you calculate is the load you compare against the ceiling.

Rounding to real CSI packs

4,016.25 g is not a size anyone sells, so the last step is choosing bottles. CSI lists most oils at 15 g, 50 g, 100 g, 500 g and 1 kg. There is no stated minimum order, and anything above the listed packs is quoted on WhatsApp with no published discount figure. For a single-scent run the choice is between four 1 kg bottles plus a small top-up, or four bottles exactly with a slightly smaller loss allowance.

With exactly four kilos, the loss allowance drops from 5% to 4.58%. That is 4,000 g ÷ 3,825 g − 1. For a maker with a clean pouring setup, 4.58% is a perfectly reasonable allowance and the top-up is money you do not need to spend. For a first production run, or one on a new melter, keep the full 5%. The top-up bottle costs less than a pack you cannot fill. Where two 15 g bottles cover the top-up more cheaply than one 50 g, the table uses them. That is a quirk of the price ladder, not a recommendation to produce from testers.

The loss allowance changes the oil by about 115 g for every 3 points, but the pack plan barely moves until the need crosses a bottle boundary. That is why it is worth knowing your real loss figure. At 3% or below the four kilos cover everything with room to spare. At 8% the four kilos need a 150 g top-up. For the wax the steps are coarser, because rounding to Luxury Soy Wax Chunks bags works in 500 g and 1 kg increments above the 10 kg bags. Note one quirk of the listed prices: two 5 kg bags cost ₹5,990.00 and one 10 kg bag costs ₹5,999.00. The ₹9.00 difference is real but not worth planning around.

When the 500 packs are three scents

Most melt ranges launch with more than one scent. If the 500 packs are 200 Mango Coconut, 200 Fresh Strawberries and 100 Cinnamon Vanilla, the wax is still one purchase, because all three pour from the same wax. The oil is three purchases, and each one needs its own test packs, its own loss allowance and its own rounding. We split the 10 test packs in proportion to the order (4, 4 and 2) and keep the 5% loss.

The total oil need is the same 4,016.25 g, because the maths is additive. What changes is what you buy: 4,045 g across three scents, against 4,030 g for one scent. Here the penalty is only 15 g, because all three oils list a 15 g size that can absorb the remainder. The real cost of splitting is elsewhere. You now have four bottle sizes per scent to track, and each scent must survive its own first-batch check. An oil with no 15 g size rounds in 50 g steps, and one that starts at 100 g rounds in 100 g steps. If your range grows to six or eight scents, those remainders add up. That is one reason to launch a melt range on a few scents in volume rather than many in small runs. The 200/200/100 wedding split runs the same per-scent maths for candles.

The priced order

Here are the three oils used on this page, each shown at every listed size. The last column shows how many 75 g packs at 10% a bottle scents, before any loss. Each one covers a different buying situation. Mango Coconut has a large 1 kg break. Fresh Strawberries is value-priced with a smaller break. Cinnamon Vanilla is a warm gourmand at the upper end of the three.

That is ₹75.86 of oil and wax per sellable pack, with the test packs and loss spread across the 500. At the kilo rates alone, with no allowances, a pack costs ₹70.16 in materials. The difference is the price of the allowances, and it is usually money well spent. Containers, labels, the outer box and freight are extra. CSI's Wax Melts Containers Empty come in heart and square at ₹29.50 each (100 for ₹2,950.00), but their fill weight is not published. Measure one before assuming it holds 75 g. CSI does not list a product called a clamshell. Labels and outer packaging are your own supplier's quote.

A few checks before you pay. Check each oil's product page for stock at the size you are rounding to. A 50 g top-up is no use if that size is out of stock, and the rounding changes. Ask for the IFRA certificate and MSDS for any oil going into a retail melt: no per-oil IFRA figure is published in our data, and your label may need it. Finally, run one scent first. A 50-pack batch tells you your real loss percentage for the other 450. For the reverse calculation, where you have a fixed quantity of wax and want to know how many packs it makes, see I Have 10 Kg of Wax Melt Wax — How Many 50 g Wax-Melt Packs Can I Produce After Adding 12% Fragrance?. For a heavier format, I Need to Produce 100 × 250 g Wax Melts — How Much Wax and Fragrance Oil Should I Purchase at 10% Fragrance Load? works through 250 g melt bars.

Two related decisions sit alongside this one. Choosing between the 500 g and 1 kg bottle for a given production volume is covered in I Need to Decide Between Buying 500 g or 1 Kg of a Fragrance Oil — How Can I Calculate Which Pack Size Matches My Expected Candle Production?, and the point at which buying by the kilo beats repeated small packs is covered in At What Production Quantity Does Buying Fragrance Oil by the Kilogram Become More Economical than Repeatedly Purchasing 100 g or 500 g Packs?. If part of the same scent goes into candles as well as melts, I'm Making 50 × 200 g Candles at 8% Fragrance Load — How Many Grams of Fragrance Oil Should I Weigh for the Entire Batch? shows the per-batch weighing for the candle side. I Need 1,000 Fragranced Mould Candles — How Do I Calculate Wax and Fragrance When Each Candle Loses a Small Amount During Trimming and Finishing? covers the scented-trimmings version of this oil maths for mould candles.

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