If I Change Only the Fragrance Supplier, Can I Keep My Jar and Wax Data While Repeating Fragrance and Burn-Performance Tests?

Material data versus candle data

The title's instinct is right. When only the fragrance supplier changes, a lot of what you know about your jar and your wax is still true. The trap is in the word data. Some of your file describes a material on its own — the jar's internal diameter, the wax maker's stated fragrance maximum, the wick's product listing. Those facts belong to the material, and a new oil cannot change them. The rest of your file describes the finished candle burning — jar heat, melt pool, flame, throw, storage. Those results were produced by wax, oil, wick and jar together, and once one of the four changes they belong to a candle that no longer exists.

Six lines are pure material data and stay: everything you measured about the jar, everything the wax maker states, and the identity of the wick. Two lines are borderline and get a quick CONFIRM. Fill weight should not move much when only the oil changes — at 8% the oil is 16 g of a 200 g candle — but a label is a legal promise, so weigh three pours rather than assume. Surface appearance after pouring is usually governed by the wax and the process, but fragrance oils can influence it, so the first pour of the new oil is compared with a control by eye. Two lines look like jar or wax data but are really candle data: jar heat and storage stability. Both are REPEAT.

The fragrance and burn lines you repeat

Now the other half of the title: the fragrance and burn-performance tests. Here the answer is simpler, because none of them survive. A fragrance oil is a mixture of many aromatic materials in a carrier, and two oils sold under the same name by different suppliers are different mixtures. CSI publishes no composition, vanillin content, flash point, IFRA percentage or discolouration data for any of its oils, and no throw data. So every result that the oil can influence is repeated against a control candle made with the old oil, and two genuinely new lines are added.

The NEW documents line is not a formality. Ask the new supplier for the oil's MSDS and IFRA certificate before you pour — CSI supplies both on WhatsApp request — and check that the certificate covers candles at your load. That check is about the oil, so it happens once per oil, not once per SKU. The NEW load line is subtler, and it is where most substitutions go wrong: see the load question below.

Screen cheaply, then test properly

A fragrance substitution usually starts with more than one candidate. Testing every candidate in the full SKU wastes jars, wax and burn time on oils that fail the first sniff. The cheaper route is a two-stage test. Stage A screens each candidate in small candles for scent in wax only. Stage B runs the full fragrance-and-burn test, in the real SKU, on the one candidate that survives screening. The worked example replaces a jasmine that is no longer available with two CSI candidates: Jasmine Fragrance Oil and Raat Ki Rani (Night-Blooming Jasmine) Fragrance Oil. Nothing on this page says either will match your old oil; that is what screening is for.

A 15 g bottle cannot scent even one 200 g candle at 8% — that needs 16 g. It can scent two 85 g tins with 1.4 g to spare, which is enough for a cold-throw and short hot-throw comparison against a tin of your old oil. The Golden Aluminium Tin is useful here because its 85 g fill is published, so the only difference between tins is the oil. Screening is not validation: a tin tells you about scent, not about how the oil burns in your 200 g jar. CSI does not sell a fragrance sample pack or trial set — you build the screen from the 15 g sizes, as here.

The load question: start at the old percentage

The NEW load line asks whether your old percentage is right for the new oil. There are two tempting mistakes. The first is assuming it is — if the new oil throws differently, the old load may be too little or too much. The second is optimising the load before you know whether the oil passes at the old one. The disciplined order is: test at the old load first, so that the oil is the only variable. Only if the new oil fails on throw, or shows sweating in the storage set, do you open a second, separate change: a load adjustment, with its own test. The stronger-sandalwood post and the 6%-versus-9% post cover that optimisation in depth.

Whatever load you end at, it stays inside the wax maker's stated maximum — that is the wax data you kept. On CSI's listings, Luxury Soy Wax Chunks are rated up to 13% and CSI 464 up to 10%; no ceiling is published here for other waxes. Those are formulation maximums, not targets, and they are not regulatory limits.

The two candidates sit at quite different prices. At the 1 kg size Jasmine is ₹62.77 of oil per candle and Raat Ki Rani ₹108.38. That difference is a commercial fact you can use, but only after both pass — price never enters the test. Note also where the per-gram steps are: Jasmine is ₹6.87/g at 15 g, ₹4.30/g at 100 g and ₹3.92/g at 500 g and 1 kg; Raat Ki Rani runs from ₹8.67/g at 15 g to ₹6.77/g at 500 g and 1 kg. On most CSI oils the real step is from 15 g to 50–100 g, and above 100 g most prices are close to linear.

Scoring sheet and decision rule

CSI publishes no numeric flame-height or jar-temperature limit. Acceptance on the safety lines means no worse than the approved control, within your jar supplier's guidance and the recognised candle fire-safety standard you work to — ASTM F2417 is a commonly cited US standard. Better throw never pays for a hotter jar or a bigger flame.

The priced kit

The kit is in two parts so that you only buy Stage B oil for the candidate that wins Stage A. Wax comes from your current stock, since it has not changed: 4 tins and 10 jars need 2,152.8 g of wax, worth about ₹1,289.53 at the Luxury Soy Wax Chunks 1 kg rate if that is your wax. The old oil for the controls also comes from your stock. The jars are CSI's White Matte Glass Jar as the example SKU container.

Screening is ₹593.00, of which ₹360.00 is a 12-pack of tins with eight left for the next screen. Stage B with Jasmine is ₹1,256.00 — 1 × 100 g of oil because 80 g is needed and the 100 g (₹430.00) is cheaper than two 50 g bottles (₹460.00). If Raat Ki Rani wins, the Stage B oil is 1 × 100 g at ₹700.00 and the kit is ₹1,526.00. The full path is ₹1,849.00 or ₹2,119.00. The wicks are one pack of 20 Eco Thin C1 for all 14 candles; if your SKU uses a different wick, use that — the wick must not change during a fragrance test.

Release and record

When the new oil passes, the SKU's approved specification changes in one field — the fragrance — and the change record explains why. Write the new oil's supplier and product name exactly as listed, the pack size and order date, the load and its convention, and the date of the Stage B result. Keep a small retained sample of the new oil and one unburned candle from the Stage B storage set. If the old oil is still on your shelf, keep a sealed bottle of it too: it is your only true control if a customer later says the candle smells different.

If the same oil is used in several SKUs — a jar and a tin, say — the burn lines are repeated in each format, because jar size is part of the candle system; the documents and screening happen once. Across a whole range, the change-control hub decides how deep each SKU's test goes. When the wax changes instead of the oil, the wax-supplier post is the mirror image of this page; for two changes at once, go to the simultaneous wax-and-fragrance post.

Finally, think about the next stock-out before it arrives. A fragrance that has already passed screening and Stage B in your SKU is a backup you can switch to in a day. The backup-supplier post explains how to pre-qualify alternatives for bestsellers, and the approved-supplier list is where you record them so purchasing knows which substitutes are allowed.

Frequently asked questions