Ritesh Kulkarni 
Most FMCG brands are leaving margin on the table not because their products are wrong, but because their pricing strategy is. Getting the framework right before you allocate a single dollar of trade spend is the difference between a plan that builds the business and one that just moves volume at cost. Price responsiveness — … Read more
Cola and lemonade together account for just 2 per cent of Australia’s light RTD market — yet they rank among the top three most popular vodka mixers. That gap is exactly where Voodoo Ranger has decided to plant its flag. Lion’s craft-positioned RTD brand has launched two new products — Hard Cola and Hard Lemonade … Read more
For the second consecutive year, around 80 per cent of packaged liquor retailers across New South Wales will be forced to shut their doors on Anzac Day — while hotels, clubs, bars, restaurants, and cafes are permitted to trade and sell takeaway alcohol without restriction. That asymmetry is now drawing a formal and increasingly pointed … Read more
Australia’s commercial kangaroo industry has lost one of its most significant potential export markets — again. California’s Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee voted down SB 1212, the bill that would have lifted the state’s long-standing ban on kangaroo skins and meat, and the decision carries real weight for anyone in the Australian FMCG and … Read more
An undeclared peanut allergen in a product marketed as certified organic garlic powder is exactly the kind of labelling failure that keeps food safety teams up at night. For anyone managing a brand in the health and wellness space, this recall is a sharp reminder of how quickly trust erodes when allergen controls break down. … Read more
When the world’s largest condom manufacturer says it has no choice but to pass costs on to customers, every personal care buyer and pharmacy category manager in Australia should be paying attention. A 20 to 30 per cent price increase on a high-volume, high-frequency category is not a rounding error — it’s a margin conversation … Read more
Australia’s packaged iced coffee aisle has long been built around milk-heavy formats that have more in common with a dairy snack than a genuine espresso experience. Suntory’s Boss Coffee is now directly challenging that convention, and the format choice — a resealable 500ml bottle — tells you precisely who the brand is targeting. The new … Read more
Forty-six billion plastic bottles recycled. One billion T-shirts’ worth of textile and yarn waste converted into high-quality fibre. When a recognition programme reaches those cumulative figures — confirmed by UNIFI® alongside its brand partners — it stops functioning as a marketing exercise and starts operating as measurable evidence that recycled material infrastructure is scaling. UNIFI®, … Read more
When roughly 40 research institutions share a trade fair floor with 20 start-ups and a growing cluster of AI-enabled production tools, something more than an exhibition is taking place. At Techtextil and Texprocess in Frankfurt am Main, the line between textile R&D and commercial manufacturing is being actively shortened. I’ve followed these twin fairs across … Read more
Posting a 12 per cent revenue lift in your first quarter as CEO is a reasonable way to silence early sceptics. For Henrique Braun, who stepped into the top role at The Coca-Cola Company after James Quincey’s departure, the numbers give him a platform — but they also set a high bar for everything that … Read more
