A Comprehensive Guide to Soy Wax
History of Soy Wax
In 1991, Michael Richards developed an alternative wax for candle making because beeswax was too expensive and he didn’t like paraffin’s impact on the environment.
He blended hydrogenated vegetable oils together to create the earliest version of vegetable wax, thus creating the modern era of soy wax.
While not a pure soy wax, his invention is still on the market today. Cargill NatureWax C-1 is available through many different suppliers as a soy (80%) and palm (20%) wax blend.
Let’s take a small step back and talk about natural wax for a second.
“Natural wax” refers to candle making wax derived from oils.
A fancy process called hydrogenation creates soy wax by transforming soybean oil into a solid. Hydrogenation is a fancy way to describe how scientists change a liquid fat into a solid wax.
This definition obviously takes some liberties, but the important part of hydrogenation is that everything comes from liquid oil extracted from the soybean.
For comparison, scientists also use hydrogenation to create vegetable oils and margarine.
How Natural is Soy Wax?
Soy wax is only as natural as the full process allows it to be. The entire pipeline, from soybean seed to candle, involves:
- Clearing land for farming. Iowa has a lot of land already dedicated to soybean crops, as does much of the United States. South America continues to boom as a source of soybean crops, which pressures soybean traders to prioritize soybean traceability to avoid supporting needless deforestation.
- Planting and caring for the soybean crops. Pesticides protect against bugs, whereas herbicides help protect against weeds. Most farms also use genetically modified soybeans (GMO) to increase the quality of oils and improve overall yield.
- Harvesting and transporting the crops. Once ready, farm equipment and trucking/freight transports the crop to processing facilities. These methods may or may not use sustainable energy sources, and some crops ship across the sea for processing.
- Chemical processes extract oil from the bean. Scientists process the beans using hexane (instead of squeezing the bean… that would take forever) to extract oil.
- Chemistry creates the solid wax using hydrogenation. Also at this time, chemists apply other chemical additives to refine the properties of the wax so it’s “candle friendly”. Components like melt point, shelf life, color, and anything else that makes up the blend.
And then whatever amount of required transportation to suppliers or candle makers.
This doesn’t account for the common components of a candle that aren’t necessarily natural either:
- Fragrance – through synthetic or essential oils
- Dye
- Wick – often made from cotton (a farmed commodity) or paper (trees)
- Container – varies in material, if used
You can see that it may be difficult to claim the final product is “100% natural” unless you happen to grow candles on trees.
Soybeans are a renewable resource, though, so that’s nice.
Consistency between batches can vary, even when the wax falls in the specified ranges since the origin is a farmed crop. Plant health, farming technique, seed quality, and transportation conditions of the crop all affect the wax.
These factors cause frequent variances in wax, even wax of the same type.
General Characteristics
Performance
Soy wax is typically softer than paraffin despite being more dense.
The hefty composition of soy wax results in worse scent performance since it’s more difficult for wicks to throw the scent without being too large. There’s typically less hot throw from soy wax compared to paraffin, all things being equal.
One of the strengths of soy wax is the cold throw it gives off.
Adding color is somewhat difficult with most soy – dyes are often muted to a degree and imperfections like frosting disrupt an otherwise consistent appearance.
Shipping
More popular waxes, like GW 464 and Cargill NatureWax C-3, are sold in flake form, which is tremendously easy to work with.
Compare that to paraffin, which is usually sold in slab form, though there are soy waxes that come in a more blocky structure too.
Chemistry
The industry average melt point for soy is about 124 °F.
Paraffin has an average melting point of 131 °F for comparison. Lower melt points make soy better for containers, but not as sturdy or stable for applications that require thermal hardiness.
Despite some popular methods around the industry, it’s better to heat the wax all the way to 185 °F before doing anything to it.
Due to variances in batches, sometimes it’s necessary to hold the wax at a high temperature for a slightly longer time to reduce moisture content.
The polymorphic nature of the wax means it forms crystals easily in response to time and temperature changes. There’s no way to avoid or prevent this, but it is only a cosmetic defect in the candle.
Some businesses use frosting as a marketing tactic to demonstrate the natural behavior of soy wax.
Additionally, pure soy wax candles require a period of time after creation to stabilize, called curing.
Curing the candle for about two weeks in a relatively constant temperature range allows the wax to substantially harden and bond with any fragrance oils contained within.
Anecdotally, curing increases scent throw and mitigates cosmetic issues like frosting.
Selecting A Wax
Not all soy wax prepared for candle making is the same, just like no soybean is the same, either.
Ignoring the variances within a single “type” of soy wax, there is a large variety of options available on the market.
The major differences between them are the chemical properties, the additives, and the portion of soy to a series of other vegetable waxes too.
Remember how soy wax forms crystals over time and in response to temperature variations?
Scientists developed wax blends with compositions suitable for resisting those changes since they’re not desirable for candle making.
More adjustments are made to form the wax into a stable medium for candle making to accommodate best practices, shelf life, and performance.
Some of the major suppliers include:
Container or Votive Candles
General Recommendation: Cargill NatureWax C-3 Soy Wax
- Melting Point: 127 °F
- Pouring Range 120 °F – 165 °F (wide variance)
- Single Pour
- 10% Max Fragrance Load
C-3 is a tremendous soy wax if you’re aiming to create a soy-only candle.
Although known to have a difficult learning curve, once you have a system down for handling this beast it creates wonderful candles.
It also has a history of working well with others and being one of two main soy waxes adopted by most soy-based candle makers.
The many options for creating and curing create a wide variance in pouring range. Some makers may choose to pour cool to reduce the amount of shrinkage once the wax is in the container whereas others may prefer to pour hot.
Notes and thorough testing are imperative for success with C-3 since it can be difficult to grasp.
The second recommendation if you aren’t interested in wrestling C-3 is GW 464.
Golden Brands, now known as Golden Wax, sells GW 464 through almost every major wax carrier in the industry.
Known for ease of use and a high capacity, GW 464 is super approachable and useful for learning candle making on. It’s also very easy to find as many suppliers, including Amazon, carry it.
Other Applications
Despite the cultural love for it, soy wax does have drawbacks for use in other applications.
Decorative candles require stable waxes that don’t change in appearance, but soy suffers from constant crystallization that alters the look.
Frosting develops regularly because it’s sensitive to humidity and temperature changes.
Soy struggles to be a useful wax by itself for candle appearance, but this doesn’t make soy totally useless.
Many candle shops blend soy with other waxes to try and harness the best of both worlds.
In fact, many common waxes on the market blend soy with other wax types, including Cargill NatureWax C-1, which is 80% soy and 20% palm wax.
A slightly more popular option lately has been the paraffin-soy blend IGI 6006. Paraffin has wonderful stability, a higher average melt point, and generally throws better than soy.
Soy has a creamy color to it that some find more attractive for non-colored candles, so the blend of both is an attractive option.