Faced with the constant news that everything continues to get more expensive – except for avocadosapparently – Pizza Hut has shared some news sure to make pizza fans, and their wallets, rejoice.
In celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Hawaiian Pizza, the fast-food giant is giving away a massive 35,000 pizzas for free throughout the month of August.
Australian Pizza Hut stores sell over 1.8 million Hawaiian Pizzas each year, but don’t fret if you’re not a fan of the number one “most influential pizza of all time”, according to Time mmagazine in 2014.
READMORE:Tins of SPAM are being locked up in some stores: ‘Never seen this’
Pizza Hut is celebrating 60 years of the Hawaiian pizza. (Supplied)
Even Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has publicly declared his love for pineapple on pizza, but if you prefer another flavour, your freebie can be whatever you like.
“We’re so excited to be joining in on the celebrations and helping Aussies celebrate an amazing 60 years of the Hawaiian pizza,” Pizza Hut Australia’s CEO, Phil Reed, said.
“We thought what better way to celebrate this momentous milestone than to hold an epic free pizza giveaway during the whole month of August and National Hawaiian Pizza Day to help Aussies share the good times and spread the Hawaiian pizza love.”
Pizza Hut will be giving away 1,000 free pizzas for every day of August, plus a massive 5,000 free pizzas on International Hawaiian Pizza Day itself on August 20
READMORE:Mum’s incredible coke bottle cake hack stumps children
They are giving away 1,000 free pizzas every day in August. (Supplied)
READMORE:McDonald’s UK raises the price of their cheeseburger
So how can you get your hands on a free pizza?
To join in all the fun and shoot your shot at winning a free pizza, simply head to pizzahut.com.au where the first 1000 people to enter by 4pm AEST can claim a free pizza voucher – make sure to get in quick, as it’s first in best dressed.
You’ll also have a chance to win a limited edition Pizza Hut Hawaiian Shirt and get an automatic entry into the draw to win an epic family trip to Hawaii.
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Australian renewable energy company Genex Power has rejected a proposed $300 million takeover offer from a consortium led by Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar’s private investment firm, but says it remains open to a revised proposal.
ASX-listed Genex Power, which has $1 billion of renewable energy assets across Australia, told the market on Monday the 23¢ a share bid from Farquhar’s Skip Capital and global alternative investment firm Stonepeak undervalues the company.
Scott Farquhar’s investment fund has had its bid for ASX renewable energy company Genex rejected as too low.Credit:Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
“However, the board is willing to constructively engage with the consortium to explore whether the consortium can submit a revised proposal that is capable of being recommended to Genex shareholders by the board,” the company said.
Genex Power is the only pure renewable energy and storage company on the local sharemarket, with a key asset being its Kidston pumped hydro storage project in far-north Queensland within its Kidston Renewable Energy Hub.
The company also operates solar, wind and battery storage projects in the state, while also managing the Jemalong solar project in NSW.
Billionaire suitor Farquhar – who started software giant Atlassian alongside fellow clean energy advocate Mike Cannon-Brookes – co-founded Skip Capital with his wife and former investment banker Kim Jackson, who now heads the fund, in 2017. The investment firm says it invests in high-growth technology companies and “future-aware infrastructure projects”.
Genex Power said it would now provide the bidding consortium with “certain limited due diligence information” to help submit a revised takeover offer for the company. The company said it had an attractive future with 100 megawatts of existing solar projects benefitting from currently high energy prices, while it had 300 megawatts of renewable energy storage under construction.
The renewable company’s shares rose significantly after the takeover bid was announced at the start of last week, jumping from about 13¢ a share to 22¢ – a price not seen since October last year. Genex Energy shares were relatively unchanged on Monday after the company announced the bid had been politely rebuffed, eventually closing 2.3 per cent lower at 21¢ a share.
It seems that the four big spinning machines, known as synchronous condensers, installed in South Australia last year are doing the job they were designed to do – freeing up wind and solar and slashing the need to have gas generators operating in the background.
The latest data from the Australian Energy Market Operator shows that constraints on wind and solar output have failed to their lowest level in more than three years, little more than one per cent of output, and South Australia has been the biggest beneficiary.
South Australia leads the world in the share of wind and solar for a gigawatt scale grid – 64 per cent of local demand in the last year alone – but output from its wind and solar farms was capped and often heavily constrained because of concerns about insufficient “ system strength” to ensure the grid was stable.
AEMO’s previous solution to the system strength issue was to instruct gas generators idled because the market price was too low when there was lots of wind and solar production, to switch on.
Those directions came thick and fast, and it was a costly exercise, but the problem has been addressed with the installation of four synchronous condensers – big spinning machines that act like thermal generators but without burning fuel.
That has freed the reigns on the output of solar and wind in particular in South Australia, which are now allowed to produce up to 2,500MW in certain conditions with as little as 80MW of gas generation in the background.
The latest Quarterly Energy Dynamics report from AEMO shows that curtailment for system strength issues has virtually disappeared in South Australia, taking overall constraints down to their lowest level since early 2019, when the average constraint across the main grid was more than 180MW.
Constraints do still happen – now mostly due to transmission congestion or other security issues – and this has also reduced (although transmission constraints are still up from the same time a year ago because of the increase in wind and solar production).
And transmission remains a major issue, because it is the lack of capacity in the network that is causing delays in new projects and connections. This is being addressed, albeit slowly, with the roll out of new renewable energy zones and AEMO’s Integrated System Plan.
AEMO says that as a proportion of available variable renewable generation (wind and solar), curtailment represented a NEM-wide average of 1.1% of potential output, its lowest level since the first quarter 2019, and well below the five per cent level reached in the third quarter of 2021.
Wind and solar farms are often constrained for economic reasons – some are required by their clients to switch off if wholesale market prices fall into negative territory – but this has not been recorded in the latest quarter by AEMO.
The cost of directions to gas generators also reduced significantly, from more than $37 million in South Australia in the final quarter of last year to just $5.7 million this year.
That’s also because the high cost of gas, which flowed through to the electricity markets, meant that gas generators were happy enough to switch on without being told to do so by the market operator.
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of Renew Economy, and is also the founder of One Step Off The Grid and founder/editor of the EV-focused The Driven. Giles has been a journalist for 40 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review.
Australians face a big rise in the cost of a pint, with the country’s beer tax recording its biggest increase in more than 30 years.
As of Monday August 1, the beer tax goes up to 4 per cent, adding about 80-84 cents to the cost of a pint of the much-loved amber liquid. This means you may soon be paying $15 for your favorite glass.
And there’s no escape for those who buy their beer by the slab. The beer tax will rise from $53.59 to $55.73 per liter of the beverage’s alcohol content, raising the tax on a carton about 80c, to $18.80.
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The tax on a keg will jump about $4, raising the cost to almost $74.
Because of this price hike, Brewers Association of Australia chief executive John Preston warned that patrons might now have to fork out $15 for a pint at their local pub or bar.
“For a small pub, club or other venue the latest tax hike will mean an increase of more than $2700 a year in their tax bill – at a time when they are still struggling to deal with the ongoing impacts of the pandemic,” he said .
The biannual alcohol excise is based upon the consumer price index (CPI), which is a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by households for a fixed number of goods and services.
According to the ABS, the June CPI increased by 6.1 per cent over the last 12 months, with goods accounting for 79 per cent of the rise this quarter.
Due to the tax increase, patrons may now have to pay $15 for a pint at their local pub or bar. Credit: Getty Images
Publican of the Royal Albert Hotel in Sydney’s Surry Hills, Michael Bain, said that while the increase was certainly high, beer tax increased twice a year every year (in February and August), meaning the issue isn’t a particularly new one.
“These price rises … just keep affecting us all the time,” he said.
“Because of COVID, I think a lot of people didn’t put the excise on…so I think this is why it’s affected us more this time.
“Especially some of the craft brewers that we use, they’ve been absorbing those CPI increases. But even the small guys now are going to have to pass it on, so it will mean a price rise across the board for us.”
Preston said the industry had seen “almost 20 increases in Australia’s beer tax over the past decade alone”.
“Australians are taxed on beer more than almost any other nation,” he said.
If patrons are forced to pay $15 for a pint of beer, Bain said he believes people will still buy it, but may buy fewer beers.
“Instead of buying three beers, they’ll buy two. I think they really will buy one less,” he said.
Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Credit: AAP
According to Preston, breweries and pub and club operators were “extremely disappointed” when the former government did not deliver its proposed beer tax reduction in this year’s budget, and that the new Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has now “inherited” the Liberals’ problem .
“We believe there is a strong case for beer tax relief to be provided by the new federal government, with the hidden beer tax to go up again in February 2023,” he said.
Bain agrees, saying another possible solution could be cutting down the tax from twice a year to once a year.
“I’m not saying they shouldn’t do it and we need to pay taxes for health care and all that kind of stuff, but at what point do you just keep gouging everyone?
“You can’t keep incrementally adding on all the time at these massive rates
“(It’s) kinda like you’re absolutely smashing people with tax.”
One member, whose testimonial is featured on the F45 website, promises the workouts will “kick your butt”.
When the franchise started in 2013, the 45-minute functional high-intensity interval classes, which alternate between cardio, resistance, and hybrid, were based on a motto of “no mirrors, no microphones, no egos”.
Cofounder, Rob Deutsch, who left the business in 2020, recalls the original vision of the brand: “The workouts were super innovative, and it was revolutionary in the fact you didn’t need any other gym/boutique fitness membership(s). ”
Its other founder, Luke Istomin, who left in 2016, says they wanted to give members “a great experience primarily based on HIIT cardio with no two workouts ever being the same”.
As the business surrounds the HIIT wave, and an ever-expanding body of research supporting both high intensity interval training and the effectiveness of shorter workouts, F45 also provided its members with something else.
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When I asked what the appeal of the brand was, multiple members said a variation of the same thing: “I don’t have to think, I just have to show up.” And when they show up, they like the people as well as the variety, structure of the workouts, and the music.
“Walk in, walk out and exercise is done,” one member said. “I love that it’s programmed for me. Love the energy. The trainers and members are good value and foster great community.”
But former members had other things to say too. They said they flogged themselves, and it wasn’t sustainable; the caliber of the trainers was inconsistent; the fast-paced model values profits over people meaning those who are less fit or new to training are more likely to get injured; and there was little or no guidance around technique.
Istomin has since created a fitness model, REUNION, which he says is based on the lessons he learned from F45.
The flip side to the high “fun factor” at F45 was a lack of focus on improving strength or skill sets, he says.
“The retention rate was quite low as the constant high intensity and high-impact work led people to burn out, or becoming injured as they were trying new exercises every day and not developing the skills to master the movement sufficiently,” Istomin says. His new fitness model of him is about “building you up, not burning you out.”
It may be too soon to say whether F45 has peaked and the tumult they now find themselves in spells the beginning of the end.
Istomin thinks it might be the brand’s kick up the butt to reinvent itself and fix the problems that have plagued it: “It’s a new beginning for F45 now,” he says, “and that’s something long overdue.”
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FFive years ago, Unilever announced a “radical recycling” process aimed at tackling a huge waste scourge it helped to create: billions of single-use sachets that litter south-east Asia’s landfills, pollute its waterways and wash up on its beaches.
The “sachet economy” of single servings at low prices, targeting poorer consumers, began across much of the developing world in the 1990s. Sold at shops and stalls across south-east Asia and Africa, these brightly colored palm-sized packets contain everything from shampoo to coffee. But their size and multilayered structure render them almost impossible to collect and recycle. In Indonesia, which lacks the infrastructure to deal with waste, they represent the ultimate symbol of throwaway culture, making up 16% of all plastic waste.
Q&A
Plastic in the depths
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The oceans swirl with plastic. More than 8m tonnes pour into the seas every year, spewed out via rivers, dumped on coastlines or abandoned by fishing vessels. Plastic even contaminates the air: in many places, it literally rains plastic.
However, while ocean pollution suggests bobbing plastic bottles or straws, these make up only a fraction of the total. In this series, the Guardian’s Seascape project is looking at what is in this plastic avalanche to find out where it comes from, the harm it causes and what can be done to fix it.
The type of plastic that proliferates through ocean ecosystems depends on where you look. While bags and food wrappings dominate the shoreline, further out it is abandoned fishing gear and plastic lids.
Some sources of plastic pollution are less obvious, such as cigarette butts and sachets. Then there’s the vast, unseen churn of microplastics – trillions of tiny fibers and beads that are now so much part of our water systems that every week most people drink a credit card’s worth of it.
Microplastic itself has many sources. It comes from clothes fibers, released in washing machines, and from nurdles, the building blocks for many plastic goods that are often spilled in their billions of ships, causing as much damage as oil spills (although still not classified as hazardous).
And it comes, in huge quantities (representing about a quarter of all microplastic in oceans), from tire dust – the residue generated as people drive their cars (and even bicycles) down the street. Chris Michael, Seascape editor
Photograph: Andrey Nekrasov/Rex Features
Indonesia produces 7.8m tonnes of plastic waste a year, according to the World Bank, 4.9m tonnes of which is uncollected, dumped or left at improperly managed landfills. An estimated 4.5% of this plastic waste – or about 350,000 tonnes – ends up in the ocean.
To tackle this growing problem, Unilever launched a waste-collection scheme in Indonesia in 2017, which it said would help “empower” waste-pickers, who are responsible for recycling much of the country’s plastic waste and are among its poorest and most marginalized workers. .
One of Indonesia’s many stalls selling sachets of everything from shampoo to coffee. Photograph: Courtesy of Gaia
At the same time, the company launched a pilot recycling plant using a system called CreaSolv that promised to recycle sachets into new products as part of Unilever’s pledge to ensure all of its plastic packaging was fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. Unilever said the plant in Sidoarjo, East Java, was designed to recover polyethylene, which accounts for more than 60% of the sachets’ layers, to produce high-quality polymers, which are then made into new sachets.
But Indonesian rubbish collectors, organizations representing waste-pickers and environmental organizations tell a different story. Unilever stopped the collection scheme underpinning the project abruptly, they told the Guardian, leaving uncollected waste piling up outside waste banks.
Some waste collectors, unable to find buyers for the uncollected sachet waste, burned it to allow for more lucrative waste streams, creating air pollution. Meanwhile, waste pickers who work on landfill sites said they were no better off, as sachet waste is too low in value to collect.
The scheme was an “expensive failure”, said Yobel Novian Putra, the clean-energy officer at the non-profit organization Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (Gaia) Indonesia.
Putra’s organization published a report in January concluding that the Unilever scheme had failed owing to low recyclability and the low value of the waste. “It is a lot of effort to collect sachet waste and the price is very low,” said Putra, who added: “Unilever has not empowered waste-pickers and provided them with an income.”
A boy fetches his ball from a rubbish-filled creek in Manila. Indonesia’s problems with plastic waste are replicated in the Philippines. Photograph: Noel Celis/AFP/Getty
The Guardian’s findings follow a Reuters report last year, which cited two people involved in Unilever’s CreaSolv plant who alleged that plans for building a full-scale operation had been dropped. It was not commercially viable, they told Reuters, because of the cost of collecting, sorting and cleaning the sachets.
Unilever denied the report’s findings, saying the plant was still operating and that it was “actively working” to scale up its technology. In a statement, Unilever said the pilot plant had been severely disrupted by Covid, which had affected its collection service.
In Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia’s second-largest city, an hour from Unilever’s new recycling plant, operators of local waste banks, or “bank sampahs”, said sachet waste had been piling up since Unilever stopped collecting it.
Sutarti, a veteran waste trader of 15 years from Bangkingan village, accepts almost every kind of non-organic waste – from plastic bags to glass bottles. But she never used to collect sachets as she was unable to find a buyer.
About five years ago, Unilever approached its waste bank. “They said they would buy our sachet waste,” said Sutarti. “They also gave us some funds to start it.” She was enthusiastic.
“I bought [sachet waste] for around 500 rupees [3p] per one kilogram, then Unilever bought it from us for around 800 rupiah,” she said, earning her a modest profit of 300 rupiah a kilo.
After two years, however, the scheme stopped. Unilever told her there was a fire at the factory processing the waste and that it had to end sachet collections, she said. “Last year they told us that they would continue it again but there is still no news.”
Sachets of two of Unilever’s many products sold in sachets. Photograph: Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters
She has been left with sachet waste piling up and nowhere to put it. “No one wants to buy them,” Sutarti said, “I tried to keep them. But we don’t have a place to store them so I’ve been trying to burn them little by little every day.”
Other waste banks are also struggling to dispose of the sachet waste Unilever offered to buy.
Erna Utami, head of operations at a bank sampah at Babatan Pilang, a suburb of Surabaya, said Unilever helped build and manage the facility, before the collection of sachet waste stopped in 2017.
“There are still three sacks of sachet waste left in our place,” Utami said. “We are very disappointed. We have been trying to report this problem to the government and the company in every seminar or meeting about waste that we attend.”
Shanti Wurdiani Ramadhani, who helps manage the bank sampah in Jombang regency, East Java, said it had about a tonne of unclaimed waste sachets.
“We tried to store the sachet waste that people have collected because we don’t want them to burn them or throw them into the river,” Shanti said. She has since asked her members to stop sending the waste, because they ran out of storage space. The price Unilever paid waste banks for sachet waste was too low, compared with the price for other waste, she added.
Pris Polly Lengkong, head of the Independent Indonesia Scavengers’ Associations (PPIM), a group with 3.7 million members, said sachets were the least valuable type of waste. Scavengers working at Bantar Gebang, south-east Asia’s biggest landfill, located about 20 miles (32km) from Jakarta, only make about 1.5p per kg from sachets. By comparison, plastic bottles fetch 20p a kilo and even a kilo of plastic bags is worth about 7p.
Workers sort refuse at the giant Bantar Gebang landfill in Bekasi, West Java: sachet waste has no value for scavengers. Photograph: Willy Kurniawan/Reuters
“In the mountains of waste in Bantar Gebang you might find loads of multilayer sachet waste,” said Lengkong, who works as a middleman buying waste from scavengers and selling it on.
“They cannot be absorbed by scavengers because they don’t get any value for them,” he said.
Sales of sachets are predicted to increase by an annual growth rate of 5.8% between 2021 and 2031, according to one market report.
While many countries have banned single-use plastic, few cover sachet waste, with some exceptions such asSri Lanka, which prohibited some sachets last year.
Last September, Coca-Cola’s subsidiary in the Philippines pledged to phase out sachets and plastic straws in the country, ahead of a law to ban plastic straws and coffee stirrers.
The chief executive of Unilever, Alan Jope, has called for end to sachets, saying they were “pretty much impossible to mechanically recycle” and so had “no real value”. However, the company privately lobbied against proposed bans in India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, Reuters reported in June.
Activists with mannequins dressed in plastic waste during an Earth Day climate protest in Surabaya, East Java, in April. Photograph: Juni Kriswanto/AFP/Getty
A Unilever spokesperson said that it continued to work with governments on solutions such as replacing multilayered sachets with recyclable alternatives, adding: “We need to consider whether technical alternatives are both viable at scale and affordable for low-income consumers whilst also ensuring they don’ t lead to unintended consequences.
“We’ve been trialling the use of CreaSolv technology at our Indonesian pilot plant, where our initial work has addressed the technical and commercial viability of the technology.”
The company said it had been able to recycle the polyethylene from multilayered sachets to produce “high-quality polymers”, which are then used in its packaging.
Unilever declined to explain how it would achieve its aim of making all packaging, including sachets, reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.
“Our work at the pilot plant has been severely disrupted due to Covid-19, which has impacted all parts of our trial, including the collection of sachets as feedstock for the plant. The plant remains operational and we are actively working with other partners to determine the feasibility of scaling this technology,” the spokesperson said.
For campaigners such as Putra, the company needs to do much more to tackle the waste scourge it has created. He said, “Unilever is pushing the problem of their difficult-to-recycle material on to our communities. They created the market and it is their responsibility to solve it.”
But he and senior executive Clay McDonald, who runs Aurizon’s bulk freight operations, will be in Adelaide on Monday to meet One Rail’s workforce. It’s the first chance the pair have had to brief staff on the plans since the deal was announced in October.
Nine months after the rail group announced its plans to buy One Rail from Macquarie Asset Management and the Netherlands’ PGGM Infrastructure Fund, it can finally start merging the bulk haulage operations.
Some investors were rattled when Aurizon announced the deal because the transaction will initially increase the company’s exposure to thermal coal (which is used to make electricity and is also the most polluting type of coal).
Jewel in the crown
But the jewel in the crown of One Rail’s business for Aurizon is its operation of the 2,200-kilometre Tarcoola to Darwin Railway, which runs from South Australia to the Northern Territory directly into the Port of Darwin.
One Rail is the only freight haulage company that uses the rail link. Formerly known as Genesee & Wyoming Australia, it also hauls coal in both NSW and Queensland.
About one-third of Aurizon’s haulage revenues are derived from thermal coal, with the remainder split between metallurgical coal (used to make steel) and bulk freight.
However, the location of the Tarcoola to Darwin Railway makes it a potential transport network for more than 250 mining projects in SA and NT that produce non-coal commodities that are expected to remain in strong demand, according to Aurizon.
These include copper (used in batteries), zinc, phosphate (used in fertilizers), iron ore, lithium, nickel and rare earths.
Most of the 14 million tonnes in volume currently carried on the Tarcoola to Darwin rail link is high grade iron ore (mostly from magnetite.)
Aurizon believes the long distances between mines and ports in the region will favor rail transport because trains can move large quantities of goods and have lower carbon emissions than trucks.
Adding operations in SA and NT to Aurizon’s existing businesses in Queensland, NSW and Western Australia will also give the company’s customers more transport options. (One Rail’s trains and terminals will be gradually rebranded under Aurizon’s name.)
Aurizon wants to be able to cater for all of its customers’ needs, including providing trucking and port handling services after goods are offloaded from its trains.
It already provides handling services at the ports of Townsville in Queensland and Newcastle in NSW, and it considers the port of Darwin particularly attractive due to its closeness to Asia. Operating a direct rail link into the northern port will allow Aurizon to give its customers more export options.
Longer trains
The rail group plans to draw on its experience transporting commodities around regional Queensland to make the north-south rail link more efficient and potentially add longer trains, which already stretch for about 1800 metres.
If Aurizon’s strategy for One Rail’s bulk haulage business pays off, it is hopeful of making hundreds of millions of dollars from the bulk haulage market by 2030 and cutting revenues from hauling thermal coal to less than 20 per cent of overall haulage revenues by the same date .
Securing the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s approval in mid-July to proceed with the acquisition and divestment of One Rail’s east coal business has already boosted Aurizon’s shares.
The stock, which was trading at $3.82 per share at the start of July and $3.87 a year ago, closed on Friday at $4.02.
Still, uncertainty about Aurizon’s future earnings will linger until the company can provide there are potential buyers for One Rail’s coal business or it is spun off successfully (Aurizon is considering both options.)
Some of the nervousness over who would buy a coal-linked business in a world that is shifting to renewable energy has since eased due to the rebound in fossil fuel prices after Russia invaded Ukraine.
“Coal prices have rallied, inflation and funding costs have risen, the federal government has changed, and we think the market currently places greater value on assets with reliable, inflation-protected cash flows,” says UBS analyst Andre Fromyhr.
High quality metallurgical coal exported from Queensland has traded at record high prices this year. Prices have, however, weakened since the state revealed plans to take extra royalties when prices go above $175 per tonne.
Merlon Capital Partners is among the funds that remains overweight Aurizon’s stock, with the investment group’s most recently quarterly report showing that the rail group is still one of its top 10 holdings.
Merlon said last year that it believed Aurizon’s stock was cheap.
Mr Fromyhr argues that Aurizon will benefit from the cash generated by One Rail’s east coast haulage business, potentially in the form of dividends, until it is sold or de-merged (if it is floated Aurizon investors would receive stock in the new company.)
debt reduction
If Aurizon does sell the business, the cash will help to reduce some $3.6 billion in net debt from existing operations (plus an additional $1.9 billion in bank debt it is taking on to buy the One Rail business.) It could also use the cash to increase dividends.
When it reports its annual results on August 8, Aurizon is expected to deliver a dividend at the low end of its payout range, which is 70 to 100 per cent of underlying net profit after tax.
Macquarie analyst Ian Myles says Aurizon is likely to prefer a sale of the One Rail east coast haulage business because it would avoid the company incurring some $10 million of costs annually associated with being a listed entity and give it cash to make other bulk haulage acquisitions.
Potential targets identified by Macquarie include logistics group Linx Cargo Care, which is currently owned by Brookfield Infrastructure.
Aurizon has other challenges to tackle. Its rail operations in NSW were disrupted by flooding in early July and like other companies, it has been suffering from staff shortages due to people isolating with COVID-19.
It also needs to renegotiate enterprise bargaining agreements with unionized workforces (including more than 600 workers at One Rail) who are expected to push for higher pay increases to counter the rising cost of living.
Still, annual earnings from Aurizon’s core coal haulage business are expected to rise in the 12 months to June from cost-cutting, despite an expected drop in coal volumes.
Aurizon reaffirmed its full-year guidance of $1.42 billion to $1.5 billion in earnings before interest taxation depreciation and amortization in May. Most of the company’s rail haulage contracts include clauses that allow it to raise prices in line with inflation.
Another 29 per cent said the services made them stressed, and 26 per cent said they had used the services despite concerns they could not afford the repayments.
Facilities management worker Nile O’Meally, 26, includes himself in that group. He quit buy now, pay later three years ago after accumulated debt impacted his lifestyle.
“More than being addicted to buy now, pay later, it was being addicted to having nice things. The main thing that it enabled was living above my means,” he said.
“I remember buying a set of tires for my car … Rather than getting sensible, economy tires, I could get the sporty kind, which was not something I really needed to do.”
Buying things and then having to meet the buy now, pay later’s repayments often meant he didn’t have the freedom to attend last minute social events or gigs.
“You have to compromise on things that you love a lot more than the things you bought because you haven’t had a set of savings behind you,” he said.
Up Bank chief executive officer Xavier Shay said customers were “self-aware” of how online shopping lured buyers in and embedded unhealthy spending habits. As such, customers had requested more tools to help them save and spend in a more controlled way.
The digital bank has more than 500,000 customers, with 25 per cent younger than 25.
The broader buy now, pay later sector faces a major shakeup as the government considers how best to regulate the products, and to what extent they should fall under credit laws.
“Let’s have an end to the silly argument about whether buy now, pay later is credit and get on with the next stage of growth for this emerging industry,” Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said in July.
In Australia, there are now nearly 6 million buy now, pay later accounts, that make up $11.9 billion transactions a year, or 3.7 per cent of all online purchases.
But ballooning inflation poses an additional challenge for the sector as cost of living pressures increase, while more broadly, ever-increasing competition crimps margins.
Mr Shay said Up’s customers were also responding to rising cost pressures.
“With cost-of-living going up, people are really starting to ask for more tools to help them with their saving and make sure that when they are spending money, it’s on stuff they actually want,” he said.
chinese car maker cherry – which returns to Australia in late 2022 after departing seven years ago in the wake of an asbestos recall – has indicated it plans to introduce a rival for Australia’s most-affordable electric car before the end of next year.
Production of Chery’s first Australia-bound electric car is due to begin in September next year, ahead of first arrivals in Europe – and possibly Australia – by the end of 2023.
Executives in China provided few details of the new model to Australian media last week, however information published in a Chery market research survey in Malaysia suggests the electric Omoda 5 will offer up to 450km of driving range.
Chery has identified the Hyundai Kona Electric as its main benchmark – and boldly claims its first global electric car will be “much better” than Australia’s second best-selling electric vehicle last year, the $44,990 (now $46,990) drive-away MG ZS EV.
“We already have [conducted] a lot of studies [into the electric car market]and compared and modified our EV to [compete with] the Hyundai Kona [Electric],” Charlie Zhang, executive vice president of Chery International, the company’s export division, told Australian media on Friday.
“The Omoda 5 BEV [battery-electric vehicle] is much better than the MG ZS EV. We have the new generation of electric and electronic architectures, and the design, technology, and features [are] very much different.”
The Chinese car maker would not be drawn how much its new electric car would cost, but told media it will be “competitive”, and will “deliver value to customers”.
When asked by Drive if the electric Omoda 5 will be priced to compete with Australia’s cheapest electric cars at about $45,000, Zhang said: “I think we need to make some more analysis [before announcing a price].
“The most important thing I believe is that we need to offer value to our customers. We need to convince the customer that you will have a good offer from Chery or Omoda 5 BEV, because this car offers you something different, or something valuable.
“We need to define the pricing strategy, but so far, I don’t have any ideas about that. But my point is that we want to be competitive, in terms of the product itself, and also in terms of the value we have offered to the customers,” Zhang said.
Specifications in Malaysia reveal just how closely the Chery will target its Korean rival, with a 150kW/400Nm front-mounted electric motor and 64kWh battery pack – identical to the top-of-the-range Kona Electric Extended Range.
These figures will reportedly be good for 450km of claimed driving range according to European WLTP procedures, a zero to 80 per cent fast charge in 40 minutes, and a five-hour “slow charge” on a home ‘wallbox’ charger.
The survey – published on Chery’s Malaysian social media pages – asked participants for their thoughts on possible prices for the Omoda 5 EV of between RM180,000 and RM200,000.
Direct currency conversions suggest prices of between $AU57,850 and $AU64,300 – though given the prices of the local competition (MG ZS EV and Hyundai Kona Electric) an Australian price of between $50,000 to $60,000 drive-away appears more likely.
Above: Chery’s first electric car, the eQ1 city car.
Chery executives also hinted at a plug-in hybrid version of the Omoda 5 – however this is yet to be locked in for Australia.
The Omoda 5 small SUV might be the first electric car from Chery in Australia, however it’s unlikely to be the last, with executives confirming to Australian media all of the company’s future models will be developed in right-hand drive, including electric ones.
“There will be a range of new products for right-hand-drive markets – particularly on our T2X [SUV] product platform, but also the electric cars in the future. So there will be a range of products for the Australian market,” Zhang said.
As reported, the Chery brand will return to Australia in October or November 2022 after a seven-year absence, with the Omoda 5 powered by two petrol engines. At least two more SUVs – and a ute – are due in the coming years
Alex Misoyannis has been writing about cars since 2017, when he started his own website, Redline. He contributed for Drive in 2018, before joining CarAdvice in 2019, becoming a regular contributing journalist within the news team in 2020. Cars have played a central role throughout Alex’s life, from flicking through car magazines as a young age, to growing up around performance vehicles in a car-loving family.
China Eastern flight attendants in Brisbane. Prior to the pandemic there were nine mainland Chinese airlines flying Australian routes. Photo: Glenn Hunt
Want to fly to Paris in mid-September for a three-week break to take in the wonders of late summer in Europe? From either Melbourne or Sydney, you might grab an economy class airfare with a budget carrier at around $2,200 but fly with a premier-league airline and you can expect to pay between $3,500-$5,000.
Airfares have gone through the roof. In July 2022 you’re paying for a long-haul economy class seat what would almost have got you into premium economy before the pandemic. A premium economy seat? Expect to pay close to what a business fare would have cost in 2019.
What’s happened?
Increased fuel prices are part of the reason we’re paying more to fly to Europe, but another big factor is the lack of low-price competition. In May 2022 a total of 51 international airlines operated scheduled passenger services to Australia. That’s 10 fewer than in May 2019. Big deal you might think, but most of those airlines no longer in our skies are China-based carriers, and that’s where the problem lies.
Before the pandemic struck, those Chinese carriers gave Aussie travelers plenty of reasons to cheer. If you wanted a bargain basement airfare to Europe, whether economy or business class, chances are you flew aboard one of those Chinese airlines. Even if you flew with another airline, the Chinese carriers exerted downward pressure on the prices other carriers could charge.
Before the pandemic Chinese airlines had become a huge presence in Australian aviation. Underpinned by the vast number of Chinese tourists flooding into Australia – over 1.44 million in the 12 months to November 2019, a four-fold increase over the previous decade – China’s air services to Australia rocketed. In 2009 there were three China-based carriers flying into Australia. A decade later there were nine. As well as multiple flights daily to Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai they offered non-stop flights to destinations as exotic as Kunming, Chengdu, Xiamen, Hangzhou and Qingdao.
The Chinese government even made it easy for Australians to have a stopover holiday with 72-hour visa-free entry to 18 Chinese cities, and 144-hour visa-free entry to a handful of others. Visa-free entry was simple. You showed up at the check-in desk and told the staff you’d be applying for visa-free entry. On board the aircraft you filled in the arrivals document, headed for the visa-free counter and presto – you were in.
Australia was keen to play ball, welcoming Chinese tourists with open arms. In December 2016 the government announced its intention to offer fast-track visa processing to Chinese tourists, confirming the introduction of 10-year, multiple entry visas for eligible Chinese visitors. The announcement was part of an open skies deal brokered between China and Australia, removing all capacity restrictions on their respective airlines.
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In the first six months of 2019 the nine China-based airlines operating passenger services into Australia carried a total of 915,641 passengers. Assuming an average passenger load of 300 per aircraft, transporting those passengers would have required over 3000 flights. In the same six-month period in 2022 that number had shrunk to just three carriers and they transported a total of 22,251 passengers. That’s a quarter the number carried to and from Australia aboard just one Chinese carrier, China Southern Airlines, in the single month of January 2019.
In their absence, the remaining carriers have seized the opportunity and jacked up their prices on their European flights. Who could blame them? It’s been a dry couple of years, they’re carrying huge debt and they’re taking advantage of a surge in demand coupled with strangled supply.
Will the Chinese carriers return?
Not until the Chinese government allows its citizens to travel freely overseas, and right now they can’t do that except for essential reasons. Even when those restrictions are relaxed Australia might not be in the frame. The Chinese government has been quick to weaponize the vast number of its citizens who travel overseas, turning off the tap of travelers as it chooses, and right now Australia is in China’s sin bin. If we want to return to China’s warm embrace, we would need to button our lips, buckle to the demands of a more powerful and aggressive China and eat humble dumplings. So better get used to paying more for your airfare if you want to visit Europe. On the plus side, no international tourists from China means cheaper accommodation in Asia.
See also: Aussies flock to restriction-free Europe for northern summer
See also: Ten key tips for surviving the current travel chaos
