Australia’s biscuit market in summary:
- Australia’s biscuit market, worth around AU$3.8bn, is dominated by Arnott’s, but growth is increasingly coming from premium and value segments at opposite ends of the aisle
- Brands like Tim Tam show how innovation can drive relevance and expansion, while smaller players such as Byron Bay Cookie Company are carving out space through quality and positioning
- Anzac biscuits remain a rare constant, constrained by regulation and tradition, yet still commercially relevant in a market otherwise defined by change
Anzac biscuits don’t follow the usual rules of the snack aisle. There are no flavour extensions, no reformulation pushes and no real attempt to modernise the product beyond packaging and positioning. They return each April largely unchanged, anchored in tradition and protected by regulation, and they continue to sell.
That consistency might suggest they sit outside the commercial realities shaping the rest of the category. In truth, they’re a useful way into understanding how the wider biscuit category is behaving. In Australia, that category is worth around AU$3.8bn, according to Expert Market Research, and it’s being pulled in a few directions at once: scale versus specialisation, value versus premium, and innovation versus knowing when to stop.
The Australian biscuit aisle itself has become more layered over the past decade. There’s been a lift in in-home indulgence, more space given to premium and bakery-style products, and a shift in how consumers think about ingredients and quality. As IBISWorld notes, biscuits remain a mature category, but one that continues to perform because people come back to it.
That concentration at the top shapes how the rest of the market behaves. Some products move quickly, pushed by new formats or health claims. Others barely move at all. Anzac biscuits sit firmly in that second group.
What’s changed is everything around them. The category doesn’t stay still for long – new launches come through, brands reposition, retailers adjust space. Some products stick; others disappear without much noise. That’s what makes Anzac biscuits interesting. Not because they’re growing fast or being reinvented, but because they’re holding their place in a market that keeps shifting under their feet.
Dominance at the centre
It’s difficult to talk about biscuits in Australia without starting with Arnott’s (although they don’t actually produce Anzac biscuits).
The Sydney-based business still holds well over half the market, with estimates placing it in the 55%-60% range (Euromonitor, IBISWorld). That level of share doesn’t just reflect size; it influences how the category operates, from pricing and promotions through to what actually gets developed.
Its portfolio runs from everyday staples through to more indulgent lines, with brands such as Shapes, Scotch Finger, Jatz and Tiny Teddy - and the cult-favourite Tim Tam - part of routine household buying. Some of those products do steady volume year in, year out, while others carry more of the commercial weight.
Tim Tam sits firmly in that second group, generating more than $100m in annual sales in Australia alone. It continues to lead chocolate biscuits with roughly 40% share and remains one of the few brands in the aisle that can stretch into new flavours or formats without losing recognition. That familiarity gives it room to move, and a recent $45m manufacturing push aimed at export markets reflects how far the brand now travels, particularly into Asia and the US. Limited editions and flavour variants keep it visible but rarely push it too far from what consumers expect.
Not everything in the category has that kind of flexibility.
Competition is present, but it tends to come in from specific angles rather than head-on. Mondelez International has been building its presence through Oreo, which has steadily gained ground in Australia and now sits among the leading sweet biscuit brands. Its focus is familiar: indulgence, sharing formats, products that already work in multiple markets.
At the other end, domestic premium players are doing something quite different. At the other end, domestic premium players are doing something quite different. Byron Bay Cookie Company has built a solid niche as a mid-sized premium operator with annual revenues in the $10m-$25m range. Its café-style cookies and gifting formats have helped it move beyond a purely local brand into travel retail, foodservice and specialty channels.
Others, including smaller bakery-led producers, are following a similar route, growing more quietly in independent retail and speciality channels. They’re not trying to out scale the majors but they are building higher-margin businesses around quality, provenance and occasion.
A category balancing value and premium
Where the growth is coming from depends on where you look.
Value is holding up, partly because biscuits have become an easy substitute for more expensive treats. When people cut back on spending elsewhere, they don’t necessarily stop treating themselves – they just shift the occasion. A packet of biscuits fills that gap without much thought.
At the same time, there’s a steady push towards premium, particularly in sweet biscuits and cookies, where consumers are willing to pay more for products that signal quality through ingredients, provenance or production methods. According to Statista consumption data and Euromonitor analysis, premium biscuits have outpaced standard products in value growth, even as volumes remain anchored in core lines.
That’s opened the door for brands that position themselves differently – less industrial, more bakery-led, more focused on ingredients and provenance. Byron Bay Cookie Company is one example, but it’s part of a wider shift. This is where Anzac biscuits don’t quite slot neatly into either side.
The unique position of Anzac biscuits
On paper, Anzac biscuits line up with a lot of current consumer preferences. The ingredient list is simple, the recipe is recognisable, and the history is built in rather than constructed. That should make them a natural fit for premium.
In practice, however, there’s a limit to how far that can go. The product carries expectations that go beyond typical branding decisions – shaped partly by regulation, partly by consumer sentiment. There’s an understanding that Anzac biscuits should remain accessible and close to what people recognise.
That creates a constraint. While the wider category moves towards cleaner labels and more deliberate positioning, Anzac biscuits have less room to evolve visibly, even if they already meet many of those criteria.
It’s a dynamic that doesn’t apply in the same way elsewhere in the aisle, where brands have greater freedom to reposition and move up the value chain.
Health, innovation and knowing where to stop
Health has become harder to ignore across snacks – both sweet and savoury – and biscuits are no exception. Gluten-free now accounts for roughly 10% of sales, according to IBISWorld, and other areas such as reduced sugar and higher fibre continue to develop.
Manufacturers have responded, although carefully. Biscuits are still bought as a treat, so changes tend to be incremental rather than dramatic. Reformulation happens, but not always in ways that are obvious to consumers.
With Anzac biscuits, even incremental change can be sensitive. The texture and recipe are part of what defines them, which narrows the room for adjustment. That doesn’t mean nothing changes; it just tends to happen quietly.
Like the global market, the Australian biscuit category is now balancing two instincts: pushing forward where there’s clear opportunity and holding back where the product doesn’t need it. Large brands continue to innovate and extend where it makes sense, while smaller players sharpen their positioning around quality and origin.
Anzac biscuits sit slightly apart from both. They don’t drive the category, but they do anchor it. And in a market that moves as much as this one does, that kind of stability stands out more than it used to.
The rules and history behind Anzac biscuits
Anzac Day, observed each year on 25 April, marks the anniversary of the Gallipoli landings in 1915 and honours those who served and died in military operations. It remains one of the most significant national days in both Australia and New Zealand, shaping not just commemoration but also food traditions tied to remembrance.
Anzac biscuits are one of the most enduring of those traditions. Rather than being invented by a single person, they evolved from recipes developed by Australian and New Zealand women – wives, mothers and community supporters – during World War I, around 1915-1920. The name itself emerged after the formation of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) in 1915.
Designed to survive long journeys overseas, the biscuits were made without ingredients such as eggs that could spoil quickly. The result was a hard, durable product made from oats, flour, golden syrup, coconut and butter. In some cases, they were so tough that soldiers reportedly grated them into tea to create what became known as ‘trench porridge’. Contemporary accounts even describe similar hard-tack biscuits as being ‘so durable they were reputed to be bulletproof’.
What sets them apart today isn’t just history, but regulation. In Australia, the term ‘Anzac’ is protected under federal law, and its use in commercial products is tightly controlled. Recipes are expected to remain close to the original, and even small deviations can be problematic. Soft, cake-like versions, for instance, are generally discouraged, as the traditional biscuit is meant to be crisp.
That framework limits how far brands can push innovation. While most biscuits evolve through new formats, flavours or health-led reformulation, Anzac biscuits operate within narrower boundaries. Their strength lies in familiarity and continuity, which is exactly what consumers expect from them each April.
