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There's never a dull moment in the dynamic Australasian packaging industry, with M&A activity, leadership changes, and product innovation keeping our news desk busy all year long.

From Orora's booming growth over the financial year, to the Australian Government's pledge to make all packaging in the country reusable, compostable or recyclable by 2025, to needles in strawberries and plastic bags out of supermarkets, to the first ever Print21 + PKN LIVE joint event, 2018 was a rollercoaster of a year for the packaging industry... and PKN was there to cover all the news highlights.

See our review of the year that was in the latest issue of PKN magazine.

Food & Drink Business

Inghams has returned to volume growth with reduced dependence on Woolworths but net profit fell 61.5 per cent to $34.6 million as input cost inflation, first half production inefficiencies and a tax provision weighed on FY26 earnings.

Endeavour Group’s decision to reset shelf prices at Dan Murphy’s has restored sales momentum but taken a heavy toll on earnings, with annual profit down 87.8 per cent to $52 million for FY26 after $372 million in pre-tax significant items covering restructuring, asset writedowns and the exit from its winery portfolio.

Food and beverage businesses that delay adopting AI, precision agriculture, digital modelling and fermentation technologies risk being locked out of the commercial opportunities attached to the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, a new perspective paper from Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator (FaBA) says.