Packaging · Regulation

Australia's soft plastics scheme is authorised for eight years, funded by a levy on whoever puts soft plastic on the market

For anyone who makes or converts packaging, the successor to REDcycle now has a shape and a price. The ACCC has authorised Soft Plastic Stewardship Australia, the scheme backed by Woolworths, Coles, ALDI, Nestle, Mars and McCormick Foods, 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 authorisation that covered the post-REDcycle stockpile ran to 31 July 2026 and the ACCC register records that matter as completed. Here is what the ACCC authorised, what the levy is, and what the conditions require.

Published 21 July 2026 · The Print Register · 3 sources

What the ACCC actually authorised

On 12 November 2025 the ACCC granted authorisation AA1000695-1 to Soft Plastic Stewardship Australia (SPSA) and its industry members, with conditions, running from that date to 4 December 2033. Authorisation is the mechanism that lets competitors collaborate on a scheme without breaching competition law, which is why a project jointly run by the major supermarkets and food manufacturers needs the regulator's sign-off at all. The scheme SPSA is authorised to run is a voluntary, industry-led product stewardship scheme for used soft plastic packaging, the shopping bags, food wrappers and similar films that kerbside recycling does not take.

It is paid for by the companies that generate the material. In the regulator's words, industry participants will pay a fee based on how much soft plastic packaging they generate each year, and SPSA describes the same mechanism as levies raised from brand owners and retailers to fund areas of market failure across the supply chain. The ACCC attached conditions aimed at keeping an industry-run scheme honest: annual public reporting on performance, independent reviews in year three and year seven, at least two independent directors on the SPSA board, and a bar on SPSA signing exclusive contracts with processors. ACCC Deputy Chair Mick Keogh said the case for it was consumer choice: The recycling and collection options currently available to consumers are limited, and we consider that the SPSA scheme is an important way to expand those choices.

The 31 July handover

The date to watch is 31 July 2026. That is when a separate ACCC authorisation, the one covering the Soft Plastics Taskforce and its processing of the stockpile of soft plastics left over when in-store collection collapsed, is due to expire. The SPSA scheme is meant to take over and expand from there. The complication is timing: on SPSA's own account the permanent scheme is not yet operating. Its public position is a scheme in development, with an open Request for Information described as a vital step in shaping the future of Australia's national soft plastics recycling scheme and a search for the organisational capabilities to implement it. There is no in-store or kerbside collection running under the SPSA banner today. So the interim arrangement lapses this month, and the eight-year scheme authorised to succeed it is still being designed.

Why a printer or converter should track this

The levy lands on the businesses that place soft plastic packaging on the market, which is the customer base for a large part of the flexible-packaging and label trade. The design decisions being taken now, through the RFI, are the ones that will set how the fee is calculated and whether it is modulated to reward more recyclable film, exactly the kind of eco-modulation the broader packaging reforms also point to. That makes this a scheme worth engaging with while it is still on the drawing board rather than after the fee schedule is fixed. It is also worth being precise about what this is and is not: SPSA is a voluntary, industry-led scheme authorised by the competition regulator, which is a different instrument from the mandatory national packaging EPR scheme a Senate committee is examining separately. Australia is building its packaging-stewardship settings on two tracks at once, and soft plastics is where the voluntary one is furthest along and, for now, least finished.

Sources

ACCC, Soft plastic recycling scheme receives exemption from certain competition laws (media release, 12 November 2025): the eight-year authorisation, the member companies, the levy funding, the four conditions, the Deputy Chair Mick Keogh quotation, and that the Soft Plastics Taskforce authorisation is due to expire on 31 July 2026.
ACCC, Soft Plastic Stewardship Australia Limited (authorisations register, AA1000695-1): status granted with conditions on 12 November 2025, authorisation term to 4 December 2033, and no later documents on the register.
ACCC, ACCC authorises major supermarkets to continue cooperation on soft plastics recycling (media release, 27 February 2025, read 29 July 2026): the decision that set the 31 July 2026 end date, authorising Coles Group, Woolworths Group and ALDI Stores to keep processing the stockpile and running the in-store collection pilot; the sequence behind it (interim authorisation 25 November 2022 after REDcycle’s collapse, which established the Soft Plastics Taskforce; a 12-month authorisation on 30 June 2023; a further interim authorisation on 18 July 2024); the quarterly progress reports the supermarkets must file; and Deputy Chair Mick Keogh’s remarks on prioritising stockpile remediation.
Soft Plastic Stewardship Australia, spsa.au: the eight-year authorisation to use levies from brand owners and retailers, the scheme's current development stage, and the open Request for Information to inform implementation (no collection operating under the scheme yet).

Updated 25 August 2026. The headline and the descriptions had not been brought with the note below. Until today this page was titled still on the drawing board as the stockpile-era deal expires, in the present tense, directly above a note saying that claim is no longer true. Changed today, and only these: the headline, the page title, the social title and the structured-data headline now say what the piece is actually a reference for, the levy and the eight-year authorisation; and the standfirst, page description, social description and structured-data description no longer say the stockpile authorisation expires on 31 July 2026 or that the permanent scheme is in planning. Re-checked at the source rather than assumed: the ACCC's authorisations register entry for the supermarkets' interim authorisation (read 25 August 2026) records the outcome as granted with conditions on 27 February 2025, with authorisation running until 31 July 2026, and gives the status as Completed, with no later decision extending it. Nothing in the body below changes.

Update, 18 August 2026: we said we would report what happened, and here it is. The Soft Plastics Taskforce filed its final progress report on 22 July 2026. The legacy REDcycle stockpile has been processed, the Taskforce held its last meeting on 28 May because the remediation plan was complete, and the in-store collection program transitioned to SPSA in July 2026. The authorisation expired on 31 July on schedule. One thing below is now out of date: this story said the permanent scheme was still in its planning phase, out for a Request for Information rather than collecting anything. That was accurate on the record available on 21 July and it is not true now; SPSA describes an operating national scheme. Checked again on 24 August 2026: SPSA’s site no longer carries the Request for Information language at all, so the wording this story took from it in July cannot be re-read there and is now given as reported speech rather than in quotation marks. The full account, with the report’s own figures, is in The REDcycle stockpile has been processed.

Checked 29 July 2026, two days out. The Soft Plastics Taskforce authorisation that covers the REDcycle legacy stockpile still ends on 31 July 2026. We re-read the ACCC decision that set that date and found no later decision extending it, but we could not search the authorisations register directly on this pass, so treat this as "no extension found" rather than "no extension exists". What it means either way: from 1 August the permanent SPSA scheme holds an authorisation running to 2033 while still being in planning and collecting nothing, and the arrangement that has actually been moving the stockpile reaches its end date. We will report what happens.