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 · Regulation
The print industry’s peak body fears for charity mail. The exposure draft keeps an opt-out for direct marketing; what it tightens is trading a list, which would need each person’s consent, with no fallback for consent that is impracticable to get.
Packaging · Regulation
TGO 115 and TGO 116 replace the medicine labelling orders TGO 91 and TGO 92. Most of the text carries over; what is new lands on the artwork: red text for potassium injections, an actual-size image for large tablets, and rules for where a QR code may lead.
Packaging · Regulation
Commonwealth regulations add Victoria’s container deposit laws to the permanent exemptions in both mutual recognition Acts. For a label printer, the part that lands on the job is the 10c refund marking, an offence provision in Victoria’s Act since 2023.
Business · Training
All six ICP qualifications, every skill set and every unit, reviewed between February and November 2026, with a report as the deliverable. The review names CNC routers, lasers and LED signage among today’s equipment; the package text mentions none of them.
Business · Climate reporting
The listed print and marketing group’s first report under AASB S2 puts paper supply and carbon costs on paper, freight and postage in its risk register, unquantified. Scope 3 is absent under first-year relief, and ASIC says large customers may ask suppliers for data.
Business · Mail
We compared the July and September Post Charges Guides price by price. PreSort letters rose 8.3 to 8.8 per cent, barcoded Promo Post 4.8 to 5.2, Unaddressed Mail nothing. A barcoded, presorted promotional letter now costs 86.5 cents against $1.85 for a stamp.
Packaging · Sustainability
APCO says the regional plastics pact will begin an orderly wind-down, citing falling membership and regulatory uncertainty. No obligation changes for a printer or converter. What goes is the member-reported scorecard: as at 7 October, no report on 2024 data or on the 2025 target year.
Packaging · Regulation
In March ministers asked for a draft intergovernmental agreement on packaging. On 18 September they agreed a roadmap instead: strengthen the Covenant and the NEPM, and explore adding recyclable design, recycled content, liability thresholds and labelling within six months. None of it is decided yet.
Packaging · Regulation
After six months on the same date, the department's packaging reform page moved on 11 September. What appeared is its summary of early 2025 feedback on the A to G grading framework: broad support, more work needed on grading fibre, and stakeholders asking what obligations attach to ALT, the grade whose options include eliminating the product from market. No decision, and no implementation timeframe.
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.