New mandatory consumer product labelling standard for toppling furniture

By Gail Greatorex, Product Safety Solutions Australia

A major new mandatory labelling standard under the Australian Consumer Law comes into effect on 4 May 2025.

The Consumer Goods (Toppling Furniture) Information Standard 2024 aims to reduce injuries from toppling household furniture. A mandatory product standard like no other, suppliers have been scrambling to gear up – in some cases with limited opportunity to prepare for compliance.  

Nature of the standard

The standard requires labelling for three categories of furniture which include bookshelves, clothing storage units (like tallboys and freestanding wardrobes), TV entertainment units, sideboards and hall tables.

This mandatory standard has several atypical aspects, including:

• the size of the market.
• the broad range of product types.
• the vast number of products affected.
• the wide number of businesses impacted.
• the extent of supply as pre-packaged as flat pack (estimated at 40 percent of the market).
• the standard’s unusual/unique specifications for in-store signage.

There’s also the size of products and therefore logistics of product handling (and potential recalls), and product longevity.

The specifications are unusually complex for an information standard. Four different labelling elements – on-product, online, in-store and in instructions – cover warnings and advice to anchor products to a wall. Different wording applies across each of the three categories and the four labelling elements – 12 different sets of words.

As chair of the National Retail Association Product Safety Committee’s furniture working group, I have been directly involved in efforts to manage this complex situation.

Practical application

While the majority of mandatory standards are based on existing voluntary standards, published in Australia or elsewhere, in this instance no such standard is available for many products in scope. One benefit of basing a regulation on an existing voluntary standard is that such documents are developed by technical committees comprised of all stakeholder groups with detailed knowledge of products, production and the market. Much of the new standard seems to have been written solely by ACCC staff. While at first thought requiring a label to be applied to furniture seems straightforward, the devil is always in the detail. As such, suppliers have encountered many practical challenges in trying to apply the standard to individual diverse products.

While the standard was declared in May 2024, the ACCC only posted much-needed supplier guidelines in late October, leaving insufficient time to arrange compliance for many products across a complex supply chain. This is especially so for product sold in flatpack form, for which applying labels to the (correct) furniture piece once packed has been described as a logistical nightmare.

Compliance efforts

I know that a great proportion of suppliers in Australia are making best efforts to achieve compliance as soon as they can, including many who will already have done so.

Following concerns expressed by leading industry associations, the ACCC has posted a note on their Product Safety Australia website, stating: “The ACCC recognises suppliers may face challenges when preparing to comply with the mandatory information standard. For example, where packaged stock (such as flat-pack furniture) exists without the required warnings before the commencement of the mandatory information standard. 

The ACCC encourages suppliers to take all steps reasonably possible to comply with the mandatory information standard at commencement. The steps suppliers take to comply and to reduce the risk of death and injury associated with toppling furniture, will be taken into account in the ACCC’s assessment of compliance and in determining what, if any, action the ACCC may pursue in accordance with its Compliance and Enforcement Policy. The ACCC exercises discretion to direct resources to matters that provide the greatest overall benefit and will prioritise product safety risks in accordance with our priority factors.”

Presumably this position will also be applied by each of the state consumer agencies, which also have enforcement powers. The ACCC’s statement provides some reassurance for suppliers that are making all reasonable efforts to meet the May date of effect. However, with severe penalties at stake, such a statement does not eliminate the chance of punitive enforcement action and businesses need to weigh up the risks. Suppliers struggling to meet the start date with on-product labelling of any products should keep records of their efforts and circumstances.

Long-term safety problem

The toppling furniture hazard has been an issue for product safety regulators for the last two decades. Multi-sector consumer education campaigns have been run and many suppliers have implemented voluntary compliance with labelling and physical stability measures, especially since 2017, when the National Retail Association published a world-leading supplier guide. The ACCC’s regulatory consultation papers were put out in 2021 and 2022.

Compliance with the labelling specifications on 4 May 2025 will not achieve many instantly safer homes. Consumer warnings and instructions still rely on householders to take action. Complacency by some consumers and the longevity of furniture sold before May 2025 mean that homes will continue to have at-risk products for many years to come. Standards like these are one part of long-term strategies.

Given all this, I think it is unfortunate that the consumer regulator has not provided a short formal period of grace to suppliers that have not had a reasonable chance to achieve compliance with, in particular, the new on-product labelling.

Notably, a further mandatory standard is in prospect, which will impose actual stability requirements for some of the items covered by the labelling standard. The ACCC has agreed to consult suppliers on the detail of that.

Gail Greatorex is a consumer product safety consultant and advocate, based in Melbourne.
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