I Use 100 Kg of Soy Wax per Month — Should I Purchase Monthly, Fortnightly or in Larger Bulk Orders?

The short answer: monthly, because the cost curve is flat and the risks are not

At 100 kg a month you are pouring about 543 candles of 200 g at an 8% load, using 3.33 kg of wax a day. Ordering cadence is a trade between two costs that pull in opposite directions. Every order costs something fixed — freight, the time to place and receive it, and the check you run before a new delivery goes into jars. Every kilogram you hold costs something too — cash on a shelf, space, and exposure to heat and damp. Order often and you pay the first many times; order rarely and you pay the second on a bigger pile.

When you price both with honest example figures — ₹500 of freight and admin per order, a short check on each delivery, and 1.5% a month to hold stock — the cheapest order size comes out at about 152 kg. But the bottom of that curve is very flat: ordering exactly 100 kg a month costs only ₹120.36 a month more than the theoretical best. Fortnightly 50 kg orders cost ₹810.06 more a month than monthly; two-monthly 200 kg orders cost ₹68.09 less; quarterly 300 kg orders ₹208.71 more. Every one of those gaps is under ₹1,000 a month — small next to a 100-kg monthly wax bill of ₹59,900.00.

So the decision is made by things the formula does not see: how many bags you can store cool and dry, how much cash you want on the shelf, and how many candles you are willing to stake on a single delivery you have not yet checked. For most workshops at this volume, monthly is the sensible default, fortnightly is the right choice when space or cash is tight, and larger bulk orders only make sense with a quoted per-kg saving and storage you have actually tested.

Five cadences at 100 kg a month, side by side

The table prices each cadence for Luxury Soy Wax Chunks in its cheapest bag route and shows the average cycle stock you hold, the cash it represents and how many candles ride on each delivery. The last column — candles per delivery — is the one people forget. If a delivery has a problem you only discover after pouring, that is how many candles are at risk.

Notice that the pack route never changes the per-kilo price: every order is in 5 kg bags at ₹599.00 a kilo, because the 10 kg Chunks bag is ₹599.90 a kilo — ten of them would cost ₹90.00 more per 100 kg than twenty 5 kg bags. For CSI 464 the ladder is flat at ₹507.40 a kilo from 1 kg up, so 10 kg bags are simply fewer to handle. Neither wax gives you a reason to buy more often or less often on price. A 200 kg or 300 kg lot is beyond CSI's listed packs anyway — that becomes a WhatsApp quote, and we publish no volume discount figure.

The cost curve, worked: ordering versus holding

The classic economic order quantity is √(2 × monthly use × cost per order ÷ holding cost per kg per month). Every input matters, so here they are, all labelled. Monthly use is yours: 100 kg. The holding cost uses an example 1.5% a month on ₹599.00 a kilo, which is ₹8.98 per kilo per month. The cost per order has two parts. Freight and admin is an example ₹500 — CSI publishes no shipping charges, so replace it with what you actually pay. The incoming check depends on your practice: a full 3 + 3 check uses about ₹2,024.20 of materials; a routine 1 + 1 pull from the first production batch uses about ₹534.69.

With a routine 1 + 1 check, the lowest-cost order is about 152 kg; with a full 3 + 3 check on every delivery it moves out to about 237 kg, because each order now carries more fixed cost. Either way, the totals from 100 kg to 300 kg sit within a few hundred rupees of each other, and even fortnightly orders cost under ₹1,000 a month more. That is the flat-bottom property of this curve, and it is good news: you are free to choose cadence on practical grounds without paying much for it. The procurement system post keeps this formula as one input among several, and the cash-versus-discount post adds a discount to the curve.

What decides it in practice: space, summer and lot exposure

One hundred kilograms is twenty 5 kg bags or ten 10 kg bags. Two hundred is twice that. Before choosing a cadence, measure the cool, dry space you have off the floor and away from a sun-facing wall or a tin roof. CSI publishes no heat-survival data for its waxes, and the 60-month shelf life on the CSI 464 product page is stated for cool, dry storage. A cadence that pushes bags into a hot corridor in May is not cheaper; it is untested. Storing 100 kg of soy wax through an Indian summer covers what to confirm.

The second practical limit is lot exposure. At monthly cadence about 543 candles' worth of wax arrives in one delivery. CSI publishes no lot numbers or batch-consistency data, so you cannot assume two deliveries are the same — you can only check. A smaller, more frequent delivery limits how many candles a surprise can reach; a larger one means one check governs more production. If you choose two-monthly or quarterly orders, make the incoming check thorough and keep a retained sample of each delivery. Testing each lot before mixing it into production covers multi-lot purchases.

The incoming check, sized to your cadence

Whatever cadence you choose, each delivery gets a check before it goes into jars. The depth of that check is a working practice you set, and it should rise with the size of the delivery. The candle counts below are labelled working practices, not standards.

The two waxes priced for a 100 kg month

Both waxes are shown because their ladders behave differently and that changes how you build each order — not because one performs better. CSI publishes no data ranking them. If you are deciding between them, test in your jar first: comparing soy wax samples objectively.

The decision rule

For the reader who asked: order monthly. In Luxury Soy Wax Chunks that is 20 × 5 kg, ₹59,900.00; in CSI 464, 10 × 10 kg, ₹50,740.00. Switch to fortnightly if your dry storage is under about a dozen bags. Only move to two-monthly or quarterly lots against a written per-kg quote that beats the extra holding cost, and check every delivery against a retained control before it reaches a jar. Safety stock at 50 kg a month shows how to size the buffer that sits under whichever cadence you choose.

Frequently asked questions