My Fragrance Supplier Offers a Better Rate at 5 Kg — How Many Monthly Candle Sales Do I Need Before Buying That Quantity Makes Sense?

The money test

Use your supplier's two actual prices. For the worked example, take ₹5,221.00 a kilo at 1 kg — CSI's listed Lavender 1 kg, a real anchor — and ₹4,700.00 a kilo at 5 kg, the reader's hypothetical better rate, 10.0% lower. Buying 5 kg saves ₹521.00 a kilo, ₹2,605.00 in all, over the months it takes to use it.

Against that, holding. Buying a kilo at a time, the bottle averages half full: ₹2,610.50 of stock. Buying 5 kg, the stock averages 2.5 kg: ₹11,750.00. The difference, ₹9,139.50, is held for as long as 5 kg lasts. At an example holding cost of 2% a month — your cost of money plus storage and risk, a figure you should replace — that is ₹182.79 a month.

Set saving equal to holding cost: ₹2,605.00 = ₹182.79 × (5 ÷ monthly kg). The break-even is 351 g of oil a month, about 21 candles of 200 g at 8%. At that rate 5 kg would last 14.3 months. Nobody should hold a single fragrance that long just because the arithmetic says the discount survives it.

The time test — the one that decides

Fragrance oil is not wax. It is a blend of aroma materials, some of them volatile, and it is commonly described as changing slowly in storage — especially once a container is opened and partly empty, or kept warm. CSI does not publish a shelf life for individual oils in this data. Ask for the oil's MSDS and storage guidance on WhatsApp, keep bottles sealed, cool and dark, and keep a retained sample from each lot so you can compare an old candle with a new one.

Because of that, set a planning horizon — the longest you are willing to hold one scent. We show three and six months as labelled examples. Months to use 5 kg = 5,000 g ÷ (candles a month × 16.48 g). Solve for candles and you have the sales you need:

That is the answer to the title. For a standard 200 g candle at 8%, a 5 kg rate makes sense once that one scent sells about 51 candles a month if you are comfortable holding six months, or about 101 a month if you want the stock gone in three. Below that, keep buying by the kilo — the discount is real, but you are buying months of one smell.

Candles needed by size and load

Smaller candles and lower loads use less oil, so they need more units to move 5 kg. The two tables below give monthly candles of a single scent, rounded up, for three candle sizes at 6%, 8% and 10% — each with the 3% loss allowance. Load is a share of the finished candle weight; stay within your wax's stated maximum (13% for Luxury Soy Wax Chunks, 10% for CSI 464).

A business selling 100 g candles at 6% needs more than twice as many units of a scent as one selling 200 g candles at 8% to justify the same 5 kg. If your range sells one scent in several sizes, convert each size to grams of oil and add them, rather than reading a single row. I Have 5 Kg of Fragrance Oil — How Many 200 g Finished Candles Can I Produce at 8% Before I Need to Reorder? counts how many candles 5 kg makes in the first place, and My Bestseller Sells 300 Units a Month and Uses 16 g of Fragrance per Candle — How Many Kilograms of Fragrance Should Trigger My Reorder? sets the reorder trigger once you hold it.

Pooled offers across scents

Some suppliers apply a 5 kg rate to a mixed order — 5 kg in total across several oils. That changes the arithmetic completely, because the time test now uses the whole range's oil. Five scents selling 60, 45, 35, 25, 15 candles a month (180 in all, 200 g at 8%) use 2.97 kg of oil a month together, so a pooled 5 kg lasts 1.7 months — comfortably inside any horizon. Each scent's share is still rounded to its own bottles.

Ask the question plainly when a rate is offered: is it per oil or per order? The answer decides whether you need one scent selling hundreds of candles a month, or simply a busy range. CSI's listed prices are per oil and per size; for a mixed order above the listed packs, ask on WhatsApp — no volume discount figure is published.

Where CSI's own price breaks are

CSI's listed oils run from 15 g to 1 kg. For most of them, price per gram is flat from 50 g or 100 g upward. But 24 oils show a 1 kg saving of 5% or more over the 100 g, and a few step down at 500 g. For those, some of the benefit a 5 kg rate would give is already on the listing, without holding 5 kg:

A worked case to close. A maker sells 70 Lavender candles a month (200 g, 8%). That uses 1,154 g of oil; 5 kg would last 4.3 months and, on the reader's rate, save ₹1,812.74 net of holding. It passes the money test and the six-month test, and fails the three-month test. If your horizon is six months, take the rate; if it is three, ask for the 5 kg price on two or three deliveries. I Need to Decide Between Buying 500 g or 1 Kg of a Fragrance Oil — How Can I Calculate Which Pack Size Matches My Expected Candle Production? and At What Production Quantity Does Buying Fragrance Oil by the Kilogram Become More Economical than Repeatedly Purchasing 100 g or 500 g Packs? cover the choice between the listed sizes, and I Can Get a Better Wax Price if I Buy 100 Kg Instead of 25 Kg — How Do I Determine Whether My Current Sales Are High Enough to Justify the Larger Purchase? runs the same tests on bulk wax.

Frequently asked questions