I Need to Make 1,000 × 200 g Candles — How Much Soy Wax Should I Order If Fragrance Represents 8% of the Finished Formulation?

184 kg net: why the wax is 92% of the order

"Fragrance represents 8% of the finished formulation" is CSI's own convention, and it settles the wax with no ambiguity. A finished 200 g candle holds 8% × 200 = 16 g of oil, and the rest — 184 g — is wax. A thousand of them are 184 kg of wax and 16 kg of oil, making exactly 200 kg of candle. Nothing else on this page changes that figure; the allowances only scale it.

The trouble is that "8%" is written three different ways in the candle world, and each one orders a different amount of wax. If your formula sheet, your supplier and your team are not using the same reading, the wax order is where it shows — by the tonne, at this scale.

The second row is a real formulation choice, not an error, but it is a different candle: the true load is 7.41%, and the wax order rises to 185.2 kg. The third row is the error. It buys 200 kg of wax, adds 16 kg of oil, and either overfills every jar to 216 g or leaves 16 kg of wax in bags. With this page's allowances the over-order is 17.19 kg of Chunks — ₹10,183.00 at the 5 kg rate. To convert a wax-basis recipe to a true finished-weight load, oil = wax × L ÷ (1 − L): 86.96 g per kilo of wax at 8%. The 10% overfilling post covers the same trap at a higher load.

From 184 kg to the wax you actually order

The allowances go on in the cluster's fixed order: 12 whole test candles (two wick candidates, three candles each, plus six for throw and storage checks), a 3% reject allowance by dividing by 0.97, 3% pour loss on wax and oil only, and 2% breakage on glass only. All four are labelled working assumptions — replace them with your own history. The pilots, rejects and replacements post sizes each one properly for a 1,000-candle order.

So the wax to order is 197.73 kg. Note that the oil line moves in step: 17.19 kg, still exactly 8% of the 214.92 kg of mixture. If you only ever adjust the wax for allowances and leave the oil at 16 kg, your last few hundred candles will be short of fragrance.

Which soy wax, and how many bags

At 197.73 kg, every CSI container soy wax runs to about twenty bags. CSI's listed bags stop at 10 kg (Natural Soy Pearl also at 50 kg, in limited stock); an order this size is worth a WhatsApp quote, and no volume discount figure is published. The table shows the cheapest listed cover for each wax and what the wax alone costs per candle at its production rate.

Four pack facts decide that table. Chunks are cheapest in 5 kg bags (₹599.00 a kilo against ₹599.90 for the 10 kg bag), which makes the cheapest Chunks order 42 bags. If you would rather handle fewer, 19 × 10 kg + 1 × 5 kg + 3 × 1 kg costs ₹1,18,773.00 — ₹171.00 more for 19 fewer bags, a trade many workshops will happily make. CSI 464 is flat at ₹507.40 a kilo from 1 kg, so its 10 kg bags cost nothing extra. CSI 468 drops from ₹650.00 to ₹637.00 a kilo at 5 kg. Soy Pearl is ₹424.80 a kilo in 5, 10 and 50 kg bags alike — the 50 kg bag saves handling, not money.

The wax-per-candle column is the honest one. The whole spread between CSI's cheapest and dearest container soy wax is ₹39.04 a candle — real money across 1,000 candles, but smaller than most makers expect, and smaller than the oil in each candle. It is not a performance ranking: CSI publishes no throw, frosting, adhesion or heat data for any wax. Chunks is used for the priced order below because its page states a 13% ceiling (headroom above 8%) and a cure guideline you can plan around. If another wax passes your own trial, the quantity is identical and only the price changes. The 500 × 200 g post runs the same comparison at half the volume.

The full order around the wax

Wax is the question, but it is never the only line. Lemongrass and Lime is one of the oils with a real 1 kg price break — ₹5.20 a gram at 500 g and 1 kg against ₹5.90 at 100 g — so 17.19 kg is 17 × 1 kg + 2 × 100 g for ₹89,580.00 (in 100 g bottles it would be ₹1,01,480.00). The White Matte Glass Jar comes in packs of 5 and 10 at the same ₹70.80 a jar; its fill weight is not published, so weigh a 200 g test pour. Production wicks wait for the trial.

In that order the wax is 41% of the CSI spend, the jars 26% and the oil 31%. That is a useful corrective to the instinct to save money on wax first: at 1,000 candles, a cheaper jar or a different oil moves the total more than any wax switch, and a wax switch means re-running the trial. CSI lists no lid for the White Matte jar; lids, labels, boxes and freight are your own quotes and sit outside the CSI subtotal.

The CSI products in this order

Frequently asked questions