Olive oil

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Mar 11, 2024
Messages
24
Reaction score
68
Location
Michigan
I have been a hobbyist and have just used the same evoo as i cook with...that's becoming cost prohibitive now that word got out about my soap and i am selling it to more people.

Can anyone help me find a more cost effective supplier? I am currently paying 51 cents per fluid oz/54 cents per weight in oz. I am a prime member so no shipping costs.

Ditto for CO 76, i am paying 31 cents for fl oz.
 
Last edited:
Soaper's Choice has 7 lbs of olvie oil for $39.41 The shipping may be prohibitive, though. Rice bran oil is a good substitute for olive oil in soap.
 
Last edited:
If there's a Big Lots near you, I'd check out their oil prices. I saw on a soap Facebook page that someone found coconut oil for a ridiculously good price there. I checked the one near me and while they didn't have Coconut Oil, they did have EV Olive Oil and I was delighted to find it for 19¢/oz. Normally I buy through Walmart at the 20¢/oz price, so not a huge difference, but it's fun to find good deals :)
 
If there's a Big Lots near you, I'd check out their oil prices. I saw on a soap Facebook page that someone found coconut oil for a ridiculously good price there. I checked the one near me and while they didn't have Coconut Oil, they did have EV Olive Oil and I was delighted to find it for 19¢/oz. Normally I buy through Walmart at the 20¢/oz price, so not a huge difference, but it's fun to find good deals :)
Thanks! Here i was thinking that all the soapers were buying from soap supply stores and that I was missing something. I followed the tip above and just ordered up coconut oil from bargain outlet.

I went searching last night and while I was finding better prices, I about fainted at shipping costs and times.

Thanks everyone!
 
If there's a Big Lots near you, I'd check out their oil prices. I saw on a soap Facebook page that someone found coconut oil for a ridiculously good price there. I checked the one near me and while they didn't have Coconut Oil, they did have EV Olive Oil and I was delighted to find it for 19¢/oz. Normally I buy through Walmart at the 20¢/oz price, so not a huge difference, but it's fun to find good deals :)
I second the recommendation for buying CO at Big Lots. Mine usually has the big jars for around 12-15¢ per oz - significantly lower than Costco, Walmart, or the local restaurant supply store - not to mention the cost of paying for shipping if you order it from a soaping supplier.
 
Here i was thinking that all the soapers were buying from soap supply stores and that I was missing something.
I buy whatever I can locally. Oils are heavy and shipping adds so much to the end cost. I get my OO at Costco, but have started increasing the amount of HO sunflower oil to offset the increase in OO price. I buy my HO sunflower oil at Trader Joe’s. Rice bran is expensive here, at least what I have been able to find. I do order from Soapers.Choice if I need a few different things. If you can order 4 of the 7 lb jugs, it helps with the shipping. Coconut in those narrow neck jugs is a huge pain to deal with though.
 
I buy whatever I can locally. Oils are heavy and shipping adds so much to the end cost. I get my OO at Costco, but have started increasing the amount of HO sunflower oil to offset the increase in OO price. I buy my HO sunflower oil at Trader Joe’s. Rice bran is expensive here, at least what I have been able to find. I do order from Soapers.Choice if I need a few different things. If you can order 4 of the 7 lb jugs, it helps with the shipping. Coconut in those narrow neck jugs is a huge pain to deal with though.
Yes the coconut oil containers from big lots used to bug me - here’s how I deal with them now - in the winter I have big pots of water on my woodstove and I tie a gear tie around the top of the container and then through the handle of the pot and it slowly melts. Then I can decant it into a wide mouth container. You could do the same on the stovetop on a low temp. In the summer, there are days when it is hot enough to just melt it outside - I have an attached greenhouse so I park it in there and it melts.
But now I am thinking you mean they sell coconut oil in jugs? Hmm that’s different.
I think I’m going to have to buy cocoa butter in a big block, Ug, what a pain, I had been buying pastilles.
 
Yes the coconut oil containers from big lots used to bug me - here’s how I deal with them now - in the winter I have big pots of water on my woodstove and I tie a gear tie around the top of the container and then through the handle of the pot and it slowly melts. Then I can decant it into a wide mouth container. You could do the same on the stovetop on a low temp. In the summer, there are days when it is hot enough to just melt it outside - I have an attached greenhouse so I park it in there and it melts.
But now I am thinking you mean they sell coconut oil in jugs? Hmm that’s different.
I think I’m going to have to buy cocoa butter in a big block, Ug, what a pain, I had been buying pastilles.
In the summer the CO easily melts just sitting on the deck, and in the winter I can set it on a heat register which works well enough, but takes a long time. Soapers Choice even puts tallow in those jugs and it is a huge pain. I can get EV coconut oil from Costco for about the same price, so I don’t order from SC that often, and preferably only in the summer months. I don’t know why they do that. I would pay a little more to have those solid at room temp fats in a pail. I bought a block of cocoa butter once. It was so hard to break it up I swore never again. It’s worth it to me (and my poor hands) to buy the wafers. But I generally use 5% in my soaps and don’t sell, so I don’t have that consideration that those who have a business to worry about have.
 
In the past, I've used a box cutter to remove the top part of the jug so I could scoop everything out into another container. I ended up with some gashes from the sharp plastic edges. I even get that from the Big Lots jars sometimes, too. So now I usually fill the sink with hot water, wait till everything is very soft, and I decant into large, wide-mouthed pails or buckets. When I get to the bottom of the bucket, I melt and decant the next batch into it.
 
Oh boy. Shopping around for cocoa butter - I see that NDA has gone from $363 for 55 pounds to $993 for the same size. 😳 I think the cheapest I can get is about $.44/ounce with shipping, for a 55 pound box from make your own. It looks like the wafers are sold out from a lot of vendors.
ETA holy cocoa butter! I just looked at JEdwards, where I buy a lot of supplies. Cocoa butter has gone up LITERALLY OVERNIGHT from $279 to $639 for an 18 kg block. There must be a run on the remaining supply everywhere.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top