I Need to Produce 100 × 250 g Wax Melts — How Much Wax and Fragrance Oil Should I Purchase at 10% Fragrance Load?

The 10% maths on a 250 g melt

Wax melts are commonly made at higher fragrance loads than container candles, because a melt has no wick and releases scent only from a warmed pool. That makes the load convention more important, not less. CSI uses the finished-weight convention in every series: oil = finished weight × load, wax = finished weight − oil. The alternative, adding a percentage of the wax weight as oil, quietly gives a lower true load and a bigger batch.

The second row is the common mistake: buy 25 kg of wax because the order is 25 kg, then add 10% of it as oil. You end up with 27.5 kg of melts, ten packs more than you planned, at 9.09% instead of 10%. You have bought 2.5 kg of wax you did not need, about ₹1,497.50 in Chunks, and every pack is slightly weaker than your test. The third row gets the percentage right but still over-buys wax. Only the first row matches the order.

Per-pack material cost here excludes packaging, labels, labour, freight and GST. Oil is 40% of the Chunks pack's material cost at this load, far more than in a candle, which is why the oil choice and the load deserve the most thought on a melt range. 500 × 75 g melt packs at 10% runs the same maths at a smaller pack size.

Which CSI wax can carry 10%

CSI does not list a wax sold specifically for wax melts, and we would rather say so than relabel a container wax. What we can tell you is which waxes have a published fragrance ceiling, because at melt loads the ceiling is the first constraint:

CSI 464 is ₹2,216.40 cheaper for 24 kg, and at 10% it is inside its stated maximum. But "inside" means "at": a 10% plan with a scale that reads a gram or two high on each batch puts some packs above the maximum. Chunks give you three points of margin for the same plan. Both are container waxes; how either releases from your mould, holds a crisp edge and resists sweating at 10% is something to test, not something we can promise. The general-practice concerns with high-load melts are oil seeping to the surface and soft edges, so check both after your cure checkpoint.

From 100 packs to a real order

The allowance stack for melts differs from candles in one way: loss happens at demoulding and trimming as well as pouring. Broken cubes, a bar that sticks and snaps, edges trimmed for a clean look. Those can often be remelted, but not all of it gets back into packs. Four percent is a labelled working figure; measure yours.

The oil combination is the cheapest listed cover for 2,652 g, but it is five bottles. If you prefer fewer, 2 × 1 kg + 500 g + 2 × 100 g (2,700 g) costs ₹9,605.20, ₹51.92 more. Fresh Strawberries has a 6.3% saving at 1 kg over 100 g per gram, one of the oils where the kilo is genuinely cheaper. A single-scent run of 100 packs is simple; a range split across scents is rounded per scent — the fragrance-split guide shows how.

Moulds, containers and what a 250 g pack is

A 250 g pack might be one large bar, a bag of small shapes or several containers. Whatever it is, the calculation above only needs the finished weight. What it does not tell you is how many moulds or containers you need, because CSI publishes no cavity or container fill weights for melt moulds or for the Wax Melts Containers Empty (Heart or Square, ₹29.50 each). Weigh one filled cavity or container of your blend, then divide.

Measuring clamshell capacity and converting a mould's water weight go deeper into measuring cavities before buying wax.

If you change the load

The finished weight is fixed by the pack, so a load change only moves the split. Here is the same 100-pack run at four loads, with the ceiling check for each wax:

Each two points of load moves 500 g of oil across 25 kg of melts, about ₹1,770.00 of Fresh Strawberries at the kilo rate. Above 10% only Chunks remain within a published maximum, and 13% is its ceiling, never a target. For any other wax, no ceiling is published in our data, so ask CSI on WhatsApp for the wax maker's stated maximum before planning a melt load. 10 kg of wax at 12% works the problem from the other end: a fixed amount of wax and a higher load.

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