The food and grocery manufacturing sector pays wages and salaries of $13.56 billion.
The industry’s workforce accounts for about 3 per cent of the population.
The food and grocery manufacturing industry consists of 30,104 businesses.
The industry provides around 24 million nutritious, affordable meals to Australians every day.
312,000 Australians are employed in the food, beverage and manufacturing industries, including half in rural and regional areas.
Australia’s $108 billion food and grocery manufacturing industry is the nation’s largest manufacturing sector.
Industry spends on average 0.5 per cent of turn-over on R&D – about $368 million a year.

Media Centre

$1.8 billon to run costly national CDL

Thursday, 15 December 2011 12:01

An investigation by Australia’s Environment Ministers confirmed once again that a national Container Deposit Legislation (CDL) system is an extremely expensive way to reduce packaging waste, the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) highlighted today.

The Packaging Impacts Consultation Regulatory Impact Statement (PICRIS) – commissioned by all Australian Governments, including the Northern Territory – on future packaging waste options found the cost to the Australian community for a national CDL would between $1.4 billion and $1.8 billion.

The packaging investigation highlighted the most cost-effective option was the Australian Packaging Covenant (APC), a co-regulatory agreement between industry, all levels of Government and NGOs to better manage Australia’s packaging waste.

AFGC Chief Executive Kate Carnell said the APC has been successfully operating for the past decade with packaging recycling rates improving from 39 per cent in 2003 to almost 63 per cent in 2010.

“Australia must adopt a packaging waste mechanism with a capacity to be much broader than just beverage containers,” Ms Carnell said.

“Industry is very supportive of current product stewardship approaches – including at-home and away-from-home recycling – and extending the APC to offer a broad-based, longer-term and cost effective solution for packaging waste,” Ms Carnell said.

Ms Carnell said it was a disappointing that the NT Government has implemented a CDL without waiting to for the results of the PICRIS to be released.

“It’s very disappointing that the NT Government went ahead with their CDL – starting on January 3 2012 – which will be an expensive exercise for the people of the Northern Territory,” Ms Carnell said.

“Industry told the NT Government many times that CDL was a very expensive option – and the PICRIS certainly confirms that we were right.”

Industry will prepare a detailed submission in the New Year to respond to the PICRIS as part of the stakeholder consultation.

-ENDS-

More information: Brad Watts AFGC Director Media and Corporate Affairs 0437 379 818.