Section
The business end of the trade: pricing anatomy, the packaging rules a brand inherits with its first box, and when a finish earns its cost.
Business · Industry data
Employment in the printing subdivision went 26,200, then 25,500, then 24,000 at end of June. Over the same two years sales fell 12.7 per cent and rebounded 8.8, and operating profit halved and almost fully recovered. The money came back; the payroll did not.
Compliance · Supply chain
The threshold is $100 million in consolidated revenue, which excludes nearly every printer. The questionnaires arrive because section 16 makes your customer describe its supply chain risks, its due diligence, and how it knows any of it is working.
Packaging
The bill is stalled with no amendments circulated, the department's page has not moved since March, and the industry fee model is deferred past FY27. Three tracks, no dates.
Packaging · Regulation
The ACCC has authorised the supermarket-backed Soft Plastic Stewardship Australia scheme to run a national soft-plastics recycling scheme for eight years, funded by a levy on the businesses that put soft plastic packaging on the market. The separate interim stockpile authorisation ran to 31 July 2026 and is recorded as completed on the ACCC register.
Packaging · Regulation
The government's Design for Kerbside Recyclability Grading Framework gives every pack a single grade from A to G across rigid plastics, flexible plastics, fibre, metal and glass, and it scores the things a printer controls: material, inks, adhesives and labels. In stakeholder engagement through 2026, no decision yet on whether it becomes regulation.
Packaging · Leadership
The covenant body loses chief executive Chris Foley at the end of November, inside the busiest packaging-reform window in years. The board says its strategy and its positions before government are unchanged; the continuity plan is the useful part for anyone who supplies or converts packaging.
Packaging · Regulation
The Senate committee examining the No Time to Waste EPR bill reports on 6 August. The government's own consultation shows 65 per cent of respondents back mandatory EPR, and APCO, which runs the voluntary covenant, now advocates mandatory settings too.
Business of print
Why the same job is $180 at one shop and $600 at another: the fixed-cost anatomy of a quote, the industry cost data, and what cheap online printing trades away.
Finishes
What each specialty finish physically is, how it is applied, the tooling economics that drive its cost, and when it is overkill.
Packaging
The ABS numbers behind the unboxing trend, what the APCO data says about fibre packaging, and the recyclability and labelling rules a small brand inherits with its first box.
Business of print
The cheapest premium object a business can hand over, the size standard that only covers the plastic ones, and where QR codes fit.