A Corporate Customer Wants 2,000 Candles in One Fragrance — How Do I Calculate How Many Kilograms of Fragrance Oil I Need Before Placing the Raw-Material Order?

The four multiplications

The scenario: a company wants 2,000 identical candles for staff and client gifts, all in one fresh scent. You have poured an approved sample: 200 g finished weight, Lemongrass and Lime at 8%, in Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464 (rated up to 10% fragrance load — the wax maker's stated formulation maximum). Before you place the raw-material order, you need one number: how many kilograms of oil.

Every number in step 1 comes from your approved sample, not from a jar's printed capacity. Weigh the finished sample candle and subtract the empty jar. If your sample came out at 196 g, the order is 2% smaller; at 205 g, 2.5% larger. On 2,000 candles those are kilograms, not grams. The 100-candle post walks through the one-candle bill of materials if you haven't built one yet.

Kilograms by candle size and load

If the customer hasn't fixed the candle size or the load yet, you still need a working figure to budget with. The grid gives kilograms of oil for exactly 2,000 candles — before tests and allowance — at three loads and four finished weights.

Two things fall out of the grid. First, candle size moves the oil order as much as load does: going from 150 g to 200 g at 8% adds 8 kg, the same as going from 8% to 10% at 200 g. Second, the range is wide — 12 kg to 50 kg — so don't order until both numbers are signed off. The load ceiling belongs to the wax: CSI 464 is rated up to 10% and Luxury Soy Wax Chunks up to 13%. Higher load is not automatically stronger scent in the room; premium fragrance at a low candle price looks at where load is worth paying for.

The convention trap: % of what?

There are two ways people express fragrance load. The one used throughout CSI's guides is a share of the total finished weight: 8% of a 200 g candle is 16 g of oil and 184 g of wax. The other is a share of the wax weight: 8% of the wax, added on top. For a 200 g candle that works out to 185.19 g of wax and 14.81 g of oil — 1.19 g less oil per candle.

Neither convention is wrong, but mixing them is. If your sample was poured at 8% of total weight and your production sheet says 8% of wax, the production candles are weaker than the sample the customer approved — and you'll have ordered 2.37 kg less oil than the approved recipe needs. The reverse mistake leaves you with oil on the shelf and a load above what you tested. Check which convention your approval sample used, write it on the sheet, and state wax ceilings in the same terms.

Tests and allowance on a single-oil run

On a 2,000-candle run in one oil, the allowance can be smaller than on a first order or a blend. There is no blending step, the recipe is fixed, and you pour from the same few containers all run long. Plan 3–5% extra for pour loss and test burns as a working assumption; at this scale, with a repeat recipe, 3% is reasonable. Test candles are counted, not percentaged: here 12 — four approval and reference candles, and eight burn tests spread through the run.

The difference between 3% and 5% on this order is 0.64 kg of oil and ₹4,020.00. The difference between 0% and 3% is the difference between finishing the run and being about 60 candles' worth of oil short. The wedding-order post breaks the extra oil into its separate uses when development trials are involved; the Diwali post does the same for wax.

Ordering 33 kg when the listing stops at 1 kg

CSI's store lists fragrance oils up to a 1 kg bottle. For this order that means 33 bottles of 1 kg and 2 of 100 g, which you can add to a cart like any other order. For a quantity this size it makes sense to message CSI on WhatsApp first: to confirm there are 33 kg of the oil in stock, to ask whether the whole quantity can come from one production batch, and for a quote. Volume pricing beyond the listed packs is quoted there; no discount figure is published, so don't build one into your customer's price.

Jars, wicks and packaging follow the same method; the 5,000-candle post builds the complete bill of materials for a run in one jar, and which materials to secure first covers ordering sequence when the date is tight.

What the oil choice does to the bill

The kilograms don't change with the scent; the rupees do. The same 33.2 kg costs ₹1,10,516.44 in Cucumber Green Tea, ₹1,72,780.00 in Lemongrass and Lime and ₹2,53,898.00 in Dark Vanilla. Per candle at the 1 kg rate, that's ₹53.24, ₹83.20 and ₹122.34 of fragrance. On a corporate order, that spread is often bigger than the margin you're negotiating over — so settle the oil before you settle the price.

Two neighbouring questions: how much of the rest of the inventory to hold before production (the 500-candle post) and how much spare oil to keep against rejects and supplier delays when the delivery date can't move (strict-deadline buffers).

Frequently asked questions