Ritesh Kulkarni 
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent oil, diesel, and fertiliser costs surging — and Australian farmers are absorbing the hit at the worst possible time. Woolworths has moved to cushion some of that pressure, but the structural challenge for the supply chain runs deeper than a single per-litre milk payment. Woolworths has … Read more
Plastic prices hitting four-year highs has achieved something that years of sustainability pledges and consumer pressure could not: it has made alternative packaging commercially attractive almost overnight. For FMCG brands still weighing the cost of switching, the Iran war has effectively made that decision for them. South Korean cosmetic packaging manufacturer Yonwoo, a supplier to … Read more
A $22 billion figure sitting inside existing grocery operations — not in new categories, not in new markets — is the kind of number that stops a room. The ANZ grocery sector has been optimising in silos for years, and a new white paper argues that approach has run its course. The white paper identifies … Read more
Few retail compliance questions generate more confusion per square metre than what a NSW bottle shop can legally do on Anzac Day. The rules are genuinely odd — and the gap between what operators assume and what the law actually requires has cost some retailers real money. With Anzac Day falling on Saturday 25 April … Read more
Moving into the high-strength ready-to-drink segment is a deliberate signal, not a line extension — and for a heritage brand that only recently changed hands, UDL’s timing says something about where Vok Beverages intends to take it. The 8 per cent ABV bracket has been one of the fastest-moving spaces in Australian RTD, and UDL … Read more
Oil at US$100 a barrel is not a hypothetical for Kimberly-Clark — it is a live cost scenario the company is already stress-testing, with up to US$170 million in additional gross input costs potentially landing in the second half of this year. That kind of exposure, sitting outside the current annual forecast, is the sort … Read more
Landing a listing in one major supermarket is hard enough. Landing in fourteen national retailers simultaneously — spanning grocery, pharmacy, convenience, and fashion — is the kind of distribution footprint that most personal care brands spend a decade trying to build. Skin Control has done exactly that with its pimple patch range, and the story … Read more
Beauty is doing the heavy lifting at Procter & Gamble right now, and the gap between its strongest and weakest segments is wide enough to raise questions about where the company’s investment dollars are actually going. Third-quarter results for fiscal 2026 confirmed what category watchers have suspected: premium personal care is outpacing household staples, and … Read more
Winning a trademark case is one thing. Winning it against a rival that built its entire brand identity around your most protected asset is another thing entirely. The Federal Court of Australia has ruled in favour of The A2 Milk Company in a trademark infringement case that cuts to the heart of how brand equity … Read more
Any brand can print “organic” on a label in Australia right now, and nothing in the law stops them. That single regulatory gap has been quietly eroding the value of certified organic products for years — and the Federal Government has finally signalled it wants to fix it. Industry body Australian Organic Limited (AOL) has … Read more