I Need to Make 200 × 180 g Candles at 8% Fragrance Load — How Much Wax and Fragrance Oil Should I Buy Including 5% Extra for Production Loss?

The answer, with the 5% applied once

Two hundred 180 g candles are 36,000 g of finished candle. At 8% of the finished weight — CSI's convention — each candle holds 14.4 g of oil and 165.6 g of wax, so the net need is 33,120 g of wax and 2,880 g of oil. Your 5% extra for production loss then multiplies the whole melt once: 36,000 g × 1.05 = 37,800 g of candle mix, which is 34,776 g of wax and 3,024 g of oil. That is the whole calculation. The 5% is your figure from the title; it sits at the top of the 3–5% range makers commonly plan.

The title's 5% is described as production loss, so this page treats test candles as outside it. If you also want two tests, add them as candles before the 5% (last row): the wax becomes 35,124 g and still fits in the same 35 kg of bags, and the oil becomes 3,054 g, which still fits in 3 × 1 kg + 50 g. At this scale two tests are 1% of the order, so there is no reason to skip them. The hub page explains the order of steps; the test-candle post covers larger test rounds.

Six ways the wax number drifts

The diagram at the top of the page shows the same order calculated six ways. Here are the figures and what each one is doing.

The two correct methods land in the same bags. The last three each add two or three kilos of wax — ₹1,300.00 to ₹1,950.00 more for the same 200 candles. None of them is a big mistake on its own. Together they are the difference between a 35 kg order and a 38 kg order, and at 500 candles the same habits cost a whole 10 kg bag.

Rounding to CSI 468 bags and Orchard Pear bottles

Premium Coconut Soy Wax CSI 468 is listed at ₹325.00 for 500 g, ₹650.00 for 1 kg, ₹3,185.00 for 5 kg and ₹6,370.00 for 10 kg (CSI live pricing, pulled 24 September 2026). Per kilo that is ₹650.00 in the small bags and ₹637.00 from 5 kg — 2.0% less. So for 34,776 g you want the whole order in 5 kg and 10 kg bags: 3 × 10 kg + 1 × 5 kg = 35 kg for ₹22,295.00, leaving 224 g spare. Buying the same 35 kg in 1 kg bags would cost ₹22,750.00, ₹455.00 more. No fragrance ceiling for CSI 468 is quoted in this series: 8% is your formula; check the product page or ask CSI on WhatsApp for the wax maker's stated maximum.

Orchard Pear Fragrance Oil is ₹3.80 a gram at 100 g, ₹3.74 at 500 g and 1 kg — near-flat above 100 g, with the usual step from the 15 g tester (₹7.00 a gram). You need 3,024 g.

The priced order — and why jars need their own 5%

Wax and oil losses are a share of weight. Jar and wick losses are counts: a cracked jar, a wick that sets crooked, a candle that fails a visual check. So the 5% on those is a different allowance even though the number is the same. Here it means 210 of each. CSI's White Matte Glass Jar is the jar in CSI's cost examples, but its fill weight is not published — confirm by a weighed pour that it holds 180 g at your line before buying 210 of them. Wick size per jar is not published either; confirm Thin C1 in a burn test.

The textbook material cost of one 180 g candle at list rates is ₹236.01: ₹105.49 of CSI 468 at ₹637.00 a kilo, ₹53.83 of Orchard Pear at the 1 kg rate, ₹5.90 wick, ₹70.80 jar. The order divides to ₹249.28 per sellable candle because it carries the 5% on every line plus rounding. Quote on the order figure. Both exclude labour, packaging, freight and GST.

If the load changes

The wax and the oil trade places as the load moves. Here is the same 200 × 180 g order with 5% extra at three loads.

At 6% the wax just crosses 35 kg and needs a 1 kg top-up bag; at 10% it drops under 34.1 kg but still needs the same 35 kg of bags. For CSI 468, remember that no ceiling is quoted in this series — treat 6–10% as a test range and confirm the maker's stated maximum before running at 10%. If you want a wax with a published ceiling, Luxury Soy Wax Chunks are rated up to 13% and CSI 464 up to 10%.

Turning the 5% into your own number

Five per cent is a planning figure. After this run you will have a real one. Weigh everything left at the end — wax in bags, wax in the jug, oil in bottles — and subtract from what you bought. What is missing and not inside candles is your loss. On a 34.8 kg melt, 5% is 1,656 g of wax; if you find you lost only 700 g, your real rate is about 2%, and the next 200-candle order needs about a kilo less wax.

Keep the record per product, not per business. Small tins lose more per candle than large jars, because the drip on the jug and the residue in the pot are roughly fixed per batch. The 100 g wedding-favour post and the 100 g corporate post run the maths at smaller candle sizes, and 5,000 × 100 g with 5% safety stock shows the difference between a loss allowance and safety stock.

For the other scenarios in this cluster: 100 × 150 g at 8% settles which 8% you mean, 100 × 200 g at 10% shows why the candle weight is not the wax weight, and 250 × 200 g works bag choices on a 50 kg order.

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