Caffeine rules in Australia: what FSANZ has just changed

So how did caffeinated gummies, chews, bars, mints and shots end up on shelves?

Through a gap. A substance that is in a food, or in an ingredient of a food, by natural occurrence sits outside those prohibitions entirely. Source your caffeine from guarana extract or concentrated green coffee rather than adding it as caffeine, and the additive rules simply never engage.

FSANZ has just closed that gap.

What has actually been approved

On 10 March 2026, the FSANZ Board approved Proposal P1056, a review of caffeine permissions running since 2023 across three rounds of public consultation. On 1 May 2026, food ministers agreed not to seek a review, which clears the way for gazettal.

The changes were driven by public health concern about excessive intake in vulnerable groups, and by how quickly highly caffeinated products have moved into the mainstream food supply. This isn’t a technical tidy-up. It’s a deliberate narrowing.

Pure caffeine is out, and so is the natural occurrence route

Two things happen at once.

The Code will explicitly prohibit the retail sale of caffeine as a food. That builds on the emergency measure already in force since 2019, which prohibits retail sale of any food containing caffeine at 5% or more if solid or semi-solid, or 1% or more if liquid.

The bigger change is the second one. Caffeine from all sources will no longer be permitted as an added ingredient in food for retail sale, unless a permission exists somewhere else in the Code.

Read that again, because it’s the one that matters commercially. The words from all sources are doing the work. Sourcing your caffeine from a plant extract no longer keeps you outside the rules.

Every caffeinated snack format that reached market through the natural occurrence route now needs a permission it probably doesn’t have. If there’s no permission for your category, reformulation isn’t an option you’re weighing up. It’s the only path that keeps the product legal.

Guarana extract is named specifically

Sourcing matters less than you’d hope.

The retail sale of guarana extract with high caffeine concentrations is being restricted, specifically to stop concentrated caffeine being sold as food through a botanical route. Guarana was never invisible to the Code; it has carried a mandatory advisory statement about caffeine content for years, but an advisory statement is not a limit. Now there will be one.

If your formulation strategy has been to reach for a plant extract rather than synthetic caffeine, that workaround has been anticipated and closed.

High-caffeine coffee drinks get new labelling

Packaged coffee beverages with high caffeine levels will need to declare caffeine content per serve in the nutrition information panel, and carry an advisory statement that the product isn’t suitable for children under 15 years, or for pregnant or breastfeeding women.

That’s a nutrition information panel change and an artwork change. If you run large print quantities or hold long-dated stock, that’s the piece to cost out early.

Sports foods get a ‘permission’, with conditions attached

There is an opening here, and it’s a real one.

Caffeine will be permitted in formulated supplementary sports foods within defined limits, including a maximum of 200 mg in a one-day quantity. New warning and advisory labelling requirements come with it, along with packaging requirements for certain products sold in multipacks.

This is genuinely new ground. Caffeine does not currently appear in the list of substances permitted as nutritive substances in formulated supplementary sports foods, which runs to just six entries. The category is about to gain a seventh.

Note the shape of the permission. It’s category-specific, dose-capped, and conditional on labelling. It is not an invitation to reposition a confectionery product as a sports food to reach it. Formulated supplementary sports foods carry their own compositional requirements and their own prescribed name, and a product either meets them or it doesn’t.

If you’re considering that pivot, work out whether you can genuinely sit in that category before you build a launch plan around it.

What isn’t changing, and where the judgement call sits

Existing permissions for caffeine in cola-type drinks and formulated caffeinated beverages remain the same.

Ingredients that contain caffeine by natural occurrence, such as coffee and tea, can still be added to food. And this is where two statements sit side by side that sound like they contradict each other. Caffeine from all sources is prohibited as an added ingredient. Coffee and tea can still be added.

Both are true. The distinction is between an ingredient that naturally contains caffeine and a concentrated source of caffeine dressed as an ingredient. Brewed coffee in a ready-to-drink product is one thing. A standardised extract selected and dosed for its caffeine content is another.

Working out which side a given ingredient falls on is the call that will decide a lot of reformulations over the next two years, and it’s not a call to make on a supplier’s word alone. Add to that the novel food question: a concentrated extract, powder or isolate may still require a pre-market safety assessment even when the plant it came from is entirely familiar. The form changes the answer.

Two years is shorter than it sounds

Businesses get two years from gazettal to comply. That reads like breathing room, and it isn’t.

Reformulation takes time. Stability and shelf-life work takes time. Sensory testing, supplier requalification, artwork revision, print runs, existing stock in the channel, all of it takes time, and none of it can start until you’ve established whether your product has a future in its current form.

The businesses that handle this well will be the ones asking the permission question in the next few months, not the ones discovering the answer eighteen months from now with printed packaging sitting in the warehouse.

Permission first. Formulation second. Label third.

Still unsure whether your label or health claims actually stack up under the Food Standards Code? Many food brands don’t realise they’ve made a compliance mistake until packaging is printed or a retailer flags it. We’ve put together a free guide breaking down the six biggest mistakes food brands make with labelling and health claims – and how to avoid them before they become expensive problems. Download the free guide here: https://learn.nprconsulting.com.au/labelling-health-claims