Remember when running out of printer ink used to feel like a mini-crisis? You’d be halfway through printing a boarding pass or an assignment, the page would fade to a sad shade of grey, and you’d rush to the nearest cartridge shop before it closed. Those little stores were everywhere — bright signs, stacks of refill bottles, and that familiar smell of toner.
Fast-forward to today, and they’ve almost vanished. The Australian printer ink business, once a surprisingly steady source of income for thousands of small retailers, is quietly fading into the background.
So, what happened?
The short answer: we stopped printing.
Most of what we used to put on paper — invoices, essays, letters, meeting notes — now lives online. Kids submit homework through Google Classroom. Offices use PDFs and cloud drives. Even the old “sign and scan” routine is now just a digital signature away. When you’re barely printing anything, you’re not exactly rushing out to buy ink.
The numbers back it up. Industry data shows Australian ink consumption has been slipping for years. Smaller retailers are closing, and franchise networks that once had hundreds of outlets have shrunk to a fraction of their size. It’s not just a dip — it’s a structural decline.
And then there’s the price war. Online stores and overseas sellers completely rewired the market. Why would anyone pay $60 for a cartridge in a mall when they can get two delivered to their door for half the price? Grey-market imports and knockoff brands made things even harder for legitimate local stores. Margins disappeared, and so did the profits.
On top of that, printer technology changed the rules. The rise of refillable “eco-tank” printers means people don’t need to buy cartridges every few months anymore. One bottle of ink can last a year or more. It’s fantastic for users (and for the planet), but devastating for the businesses that depended on regular cartridge sales to stay afloat.
Inside the industry, people have been talking about this for a while. Some of the biggest franchise chains in Australia have gone from bustling networks to ghost towns. Others have been swallowed by bigger distributors or simply closed up shop. Even the big brands are pivoting — HP, for instance, has discontinued a bunch of its older cartridge lines and now pushes subscription models where ink gets mailed to you automatically.
It’s not just about money, either. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has taken legal action against some printer-ink companies for misleading or predatory practices — a clear sign that desperation has crept into what used to be a fairly straightforward business.
That said, not every corner of the ink world is dying. Industrial and packaging inks — the kind used on product labels or food packaging — are still holding up. Those markets don’t rely on the average home printer. But for the humble ink-cartridge store, it’s hard to see a comeback story.
The decline of printer-ink companies in Australia isn’t dramatic or sudden; it’s just quiet and steady. One by one, those neon-lit shops that used to promise “We Refill Anything!” have switched off their lights for good. And honestly, most of us barely noticed. We stopped printing, and the industry that kept our pages full of color slowly ran out of its own.
