APCO is changing CEOs in the middle of the mandatory-packaging window

The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation says chief executive Chris Foley has given notice of his intention to step down at the end of November 2026, after four years in the role. The board has begun a local and global search for a successor to deliver APCO's 2030 Strategic Plan, which the release describes as the industry-designed model for a co-regulatory extended producer responsibility scheme now before governments.

During the transition, per the release, Foley continues to lead APCO's regulatory-reform work while chief operating officer Tom Key leads operational delivery. Chair Sam Andersen said the board is "grateful for the work Chris has undertaken" and that "APCO's strategy, its programs and its positions before governments and the Parliament are unchanged". Foley, in the same release, said he is "working closely with the Board to ensure a smooth transition, and to ensure APCO continues to provide the fundamentals needed to support an effective new regulatory environment".

Why a personnel item earns space on a masthead that does not do personality coverage: APCO is the body a packaging producer's obligations actually run through, and this transition lands inside the busiest regulatory window packaging has had since the covenant began. The Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee reports on the No Time to Waste EPR bill on 6 August; the environment department is still "considering the feedback" from its 2024 reform consultation; and APCO itself has shifted from defending the voluntary covenant to advocating mandatory EPR settings. For readers who supply or convert packaging, the continuity plan the release sets out is the useful part: strategy unchanged, operations under the COO, and reform advocacy staying with the outgoing CEO until a successor is appointed.

The scale APCO is handing over is worth stating, and it comes from the same release: covenant brand-owner signatories have grown from 900 in 2018 to about 2,500 today, and the Australasian Recycling Label now appears on more than 500,000 products. Whoever takes the role inherits both that base and the job of steering it through whatever settles out of the reform process.

Our read: the board has gone out of its way to signal continuity, and on the evidence of its own statement that is the right call to make publicly. But a leadership search running in parallel with a live reform timetable is a genuine variable for anyone planning packaging compliance spend, and worth watching. If a successor is named, or the Senate committee's 6 August report lands first, the continuity story is the one to test against.

Closer to this transition, or planning compliance spend against it? Tell us, with documents.