I Need to Make 50 × 200 g Soy Candles — How Many Kilograms of Wax Should I Buy After Accounting for Fragrance Oil and Production Wastage?

The five-step method this whole cluster uses

Every question in this part of the series has the same shape: a number of candles, a weight per candle, sometimes a fragrance load and sometimes a wastage figure. Every answer is built the same way, so it is worth fixing the method once. The target is always a finished weight — the wax and the fragrance oil together, as the candle sits in the jar. Fragrance load is a share of that finished weight, which is the convention CSI uses on every page. So the oil in one candle is the finished weight times the load, and the wax is what is left.

The order matters for one reason: each allowance should be applied to the thing it describes. Test candles are candles, so they are added as candles before anything else. Pour loss is a share of the wax and oil you melt, so it multiplies everything melted — tests included. Rounding comes last, because rounding early and then adding a percentage double-counts the slack. The 180 g post shows what that double-counting costs on a 200-candle run, and the 500-candle, 3% wastage post compares the two ways of writing a wastage percentage.

The worked table for 50 × 200 g

The title gives the candle count and weight but not the fragrance load, so this page uses 8% as a working assumption — the default load throughout CSI's guides. If your formula is different, the load table further down reruns the numbers at 6% and 10%. The wastage figure is also yours to set. We use 5% as a labelled assumption, the top of the 3–5% range most makers plan for pour loss and test burns, and show 3% beside it.

So the answer to the title question is 10.05 kg of wax at a 5% allowance, or 9.86 kg at 3%. Either way you are buying close to 10 kg, but the 5% line lands 46.4 g above 10 kg. That tiny overshoot is the most useful thing on this page, because it decides whether one 10 kg bag is enough. At 3% it is: 9,855.0 g fits inside 10,000 g with 145.0 g to spare. At 5% it is not, and a 500 g top-up bag is the cheapest way to close the gap.

Rounding to real CSI packs

Luxury Soy Wax Chunks are listed in four in-stock sizes on the 24 September 2026 pull: 500 g at ₹299.00, 1 kg at ₹599.00, 5 kg at ₹2,995.00 and 10 kg at ₹5,999.00. Per kilo that is ₹598.00, ₹599.00, ₹599.00 and ₹599.90. In other words, the price is flat — the 10 kg bag is actually 90 paise a kilo dearer than the 5 kg. So the right bag mix for 10,046.4 g of wax is decided by convenience and spare stock, not by a bulk discount, because there is none on this wax.

Two 5 kg bags and a 500 g top-up cost ₹6,289.00 and leave about 454 g of wax on the shelf — enough for two more candles or a re-pour. If you are confident in a 3% loss, the order drops to 2 × 5 kg at ₹5,990.00, with 145.0 g spare. The difference between the two allowances is one ₹299.00 bag, which is a cheap insurance policy on a first run.

The oil is rounded the same way, but here the listed packs do change the rate. British Rose is one of the oils with a real per-gram step: ₹3.42 a gram at 100 g, ₹3.19 at 500 g and ₹3.07 at 1 kg. You need 873.6 g.

The mixed order is ₹106.20 cheaper than the kilo, but it leaves only 26.4 g spare against the kilo's 126.4 g. If British Rose is a scent you will pour again next month, the 1 kg bottle costs less per gram (₹3.07) and the extra 100 g is not waste; it is the start of the next batch. If this is a one-off, the 500 g + 100 g route is the tighter buy. For a deeper look at choosing between those two, the 250-candle post prices both routes on a larger run.

The priced order for 50 candles

Wax and oil are the two numbers the title asks about, but a production order is not complete without wicks and jars, and both need their own allowance. The wick count below is 52 production and test candles plus 5 spare wicks for mis-set or crooked wicks — a labelled working allowance. Wick size per jar diameter is not published, so confirm your wick in the two test candles before the full pour. The jar is CSI's White Matte Glass Jar, the default container in CSI's cost examples; its fill weight is not published, so weigh a test pour to confirm it holds 200 g at your fill line.

That per-candle figure, ₹269.98, is higher than the textbook material cost of a single 200 g British Rose candle (₹236.00: ₹110.22 of wax, ₹49.09 of oil at the 1 kg rate, ₹5.90 wick, ₹70.80 jar). The gap is the tests, the loss allowance, the spare wicks, the three spare jars and the leftover wax and oil. It is the honest cost of making 50 sellable candles, and it is the one to quote against. It still excludes labour, packaging, freight and GST, which you add in your own costing.

What changes at 6% or 10% fragrance

The title leaves the load open, so here is the same 50-candle order with the load changed and everything else held — two tests, 5% loss. Luxury Soy Wax Chunks are rated up to 13% by the wax maker; that is a formulation maximum, not a target, and not a regulatory limit.

Raising the load does not raise the wax — it lowers it, because every extra gram of oil displaces a gram of wax in the same jar. At 10% the wax falls to 9,828.0 g and fits in the 10 kg you would buy anyway, while the oil climbs to 1,092.0 g. At 6% the wax rises to 10,264.8 g. That is why a one-size-fits-all "buy 10 kg per 50 candles" rule is wrong in both directions. For the 10% version of this question worked on 100 candles, see 100 × 200 g at 10%.

Which sibling answers your exact order

This page is the hub for the first ten quantity-to-wax questions. Each sibling takes one scenario and one wax, and adds the one twist that scenario raises. If your order matches one of them more closely, go there — the numbers are already worked.

Beyond this cluster, the same arithmetic runs in the other direction when you start from stock rather than an order — how many 100 g candles 10 kg of soy wax makes — and at larger scale in 1,000 × 200 g with test batches and 2,000 × 150 g. For the fragrance side on its own, grams of oil for 50 × 200 g weighs the batch oil to the gram.

Where small runs go wrong

The most common error is not arithmetic. It is a wrong finished weight. A maker plans 200 g candles, buys for 200 g, then discovers the jar takes 185 g at the line they like. The order is 7.5% too big before any allowance is added. Weigh the fill first. The second is using a brim volume as a weight: a "200 ml" jar does not hold 200 g of wax, because solid soy wax is lighter than water and nobody fills to the brim. The 750-candle post covers label weights, and the jar-volume questions are handled later in this series.

The third is forgetting that tests are real candles. Two test candles at 200 g are 400 g of material — 4% of this order. Skip them in the calculation and the pour-loss allowance quietly gets used up by the tests instead, so the real loss has nowhere to go. The fourth is rounding the oil up to a kilo out of habit. For British Rose that is ₹106.20 over the tight mix on this run; for an oil without a kilo discount it is simply stock you have paid for early.

Finally, keep the numbers. Write down what you bought, what you poured and what was left. After two or three runs your own loss figure replaces our 5% assumption, and the calculation gets tighter every time. That record is also what makes the corporate and wedding versions of this calculation safe to quote, because at 300 or 500 candles a wrong loss figure is kilos, not grams.

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