Do we like Aldi Australia?
Discount supermarket chain with about 600 stores across Australia, headquartered in Mount Waverley, Victoria.
Our score: 7 out of 10. Mostly yes. Cheap groceries and real renewable-energy and plastic progress, held back by a $55m unpaid-work settlement and some missed plastic targets.
Aldi opened its first two Aussie stores in Sydney in 2001 (Bankstown Airport and Marrickville). It now has 600+ stores and is building huge automated distribution centres, with about 100 more stores planned. Anna McGrath, an Aldi veteran, took over as CEO and says the focus is price leadership.
The big blot is pay. A federal court judge ruled Aldi breached employment laws by having Sydney warehouse staff start before clocking on. A wider class action by the SDA union then ended in a roughly $55m settlement for about 32,000 current and former workers. The Federal Court approved it on 23 October 2026.
Aldi's side: it says it began repaying workers in 2022 after finding evidence of underpayments. It had paid about $28.9m before the settlement, with around $26.3m more to come. The SDA also noted that Aldi Foods denies the allegations in the class action.
On the environment Aldi does well. In 2021 it became the first Australian supermarket to run on 100% renewable electricity, and the Clean Energy Regulator's transparency report verified this. It has never offered single-use plastic bags. A 2024 report said it had missed a 2020 plan to drop some plastics, though it ranked better than Coles and Woolworths.
Would we back them? Mostly yes. They deliver cheap groceries, mostly Australian-sourced meat, eggs and fresh produce, and real green progress. The underpayment history costs them a few points, so we land at 6.5.