Should I Check the Supplier’s Recommended Storage Conditions and Shelf Life Before Purchasing 5–25 Kg of a Fragrance Oil?

Why storage guidance has to come before the order

A 100 g sample tells you how an oil smells and performs this week. A 25 kg order is a bet on how it will smell and perform for however many months it takes you to use it. Those are different questions, and the second one needs information the sample cannot give: how the supplier recommends the oil is stored, whether they have any shelf-life guidance for it, and whether your storeroom matches what they assume.

Without that, a large order can quietly become a stock of oil that drifts away from the fragrance your customers bought the first time. You will not see it on day one. You may notice it in month five, when a batch smells flatter than the retained candle from month one.

What to request, and how to phrase it

If the answer is that no shelf-life figure is available, that is still useful information. It means the length of time you can hold the oil rests entirely on your own testing, which should make you more conservative, not less.

Months of cover: the number that decides the order size

Here is the arithmetic, using example figures. Suppose you make 250 candles a month (your figure) at 200 g and 8% fragrance load. Each candle holds 184 g of wax and 16 g of oil, so monthly oil use is 250 × 16 g = 4,000 g, or 4 kg.

Read the last column carefully. A 25 kg order at this usage means the final kilogram is poured more than six months after delivery. Unless you have tested Lavender in your storage for at least that long — oil kept as you would keep it, made into candles at the end and compared against a fresh reference — you are buying a period of acceptability you have not demonstrated.

What bulk actually saves on CSI's listings

Because CSI lists no oil pack above 1 kg, buying 25 kg means 25 packs at the listed price, unless a WhatsApp quote says otherwise; no bulk discount is published, so do not plan around one. The saving you can count on comes from choosing 1 kg packs over smaller ones. Lavender's 100 g pack is ₹540.00, or ₹540.00 ÷ 100 g = ₹5.40 per gram; the 1 kg pack is ₹5,221.00 ÷ 1,000 g = ₹5.221 per gram. On 4 kg a month, that difference is 4,000 g × (₹5.40 − ₹5.221) per gram = ₹716.00 a month.

That saving is earned on every kilogram you buy in 1 kg packs, whether you buy one at a time or 25 at once. In other words, on CSI's listed prices, ordering 25 kg instead of 5 kg every five weeks or so does not lower the price per gram. What it changes is how long the oil sits in your storeroom and how much cash is tied up in it.

Several lots in one order: plan for it

A large order may not arrive as one uniform batch. Twenty-five packs could come from more than one lot, made at different times, and they will not necessarily age at the same pace on your shelf. That matters because your stability evidence belongs to the lot you tested, and a second lot is, strictly, a new material until you have checked it.

When the packs arrive, read the lot reference on every one and write them into your stock sheet. Keep a small sealed sample from each lot as its own reference. Use lots in order, oldest first, and never top up a part-used pack from a different lot. If one lot smells different on a coded strip against your approved reference, quarantine it and ask the supplier before it reaches production.

This is also an argument for smaller orders. Five kilograms used within about five weeks at an example 4 kg a month is far less likely to span lots and seasons than 25 kg held for more than six months, and any problem it reveals affects five packs, not twenty-five.

If you have not tested long enough yet

Most makers have not, and that is fine — it simply sets your first order size. Buy for the period you have evidence for, and run the test that extends it.

Keep two sealed 1 kg packs aside from the first order: one in your normal storage, one in the coolest, darkest spot you have as a reference. Make test candles from the stored pack at suggested points such as month 1, 2, 3 and 6, each alongside a candle from the reference pack, and compare them blind after the stated cure. Retain a candle from each test. When the stored-oil candles still match at month six, you have the evidence to justify 6.25 months of cover. When they drift at month four, you have learned that 25 kg was the wrong order at a cost of two packs, not 25.

Whatever the result, do not translate it into a promise to customers that the fragrance will not change. Use it to set your own buying limits and any best-within period you choose to print.

Where this page fits

CSI already has guides that cover parts of this question. This page answers one fragrance-ageing decision; these cover the neighbouring questions:

Three things to buy for this decision

Frequently asked questions