Made to order, made here: print-on-demand as a manufacturing opportunity

"Most Australian fashion brands still worry more about Zara on the high street than about a designer with a laptop in another time zone. That may not last" (Kelly, 2026).

This post was prompted by Christopher Kelly's analysis in Ragtrader this week, which reported that Australia's print-on-demand market is tipped to reach US$1.7 billion at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25 per cent. In my mind, it pointed, perhaps unintentionally, to more opportunities in our manufacturing strategies. 

The global print-on-demand (POD) market is growing at around 25 per cent a year. By 2033, it is projected to be worth somewhere between $45 billion and $118 billion across analyst estimates (Grand View Research, 2025; Kelly, 2026; Persistence Market Research, 2026). Apparel accounts for the largest share, at roughly 39 to 41 per cent of the market, and the fastest-growing region is Asia-Pacific (Grand View Research, 2025). In Australia specifically, the local POD market is tipped to grow at the same 25 per cent trajectory, reaching US$1.7 billion (Kelly, 2026).

Australia is already in this market. The question now is how much of its production value we choose to capture.

What print-on-demand actually is

Print-on-demand (POD)  is often framed as a small-business ecommerce tool — the mechanism by which someone, for example,  puts a design on a t-shirt and sells it online without holding stock. That framing undersells what the model represents as a manufacturing proposition.

At its core, print-on-demand is demand-responsive, zero-inventory, made-to-order production. Nothing is made until it is sold, which means no overproduction and no clearance cycles. The structural waste embedded in conventional fashion, where industry estimates suggest 30 per cent or more of manufactured garments are never sold, is largely eliminated (IndexBox, 2026).

The infrastructure that enables it: digital printing; automated fulfilment; and integrated design-to-production workflows, mimics what advanced manufacturing investment is meant to accelerate. The market is growing well ahead of ecommerce overall, which is tracking at roughly 9 to 11 per cent annually (Printful, 2026). The opportunity to position Australian manufacturers at the centre of this shift is available now.

What our strategies have built — and where they can go next

Two significant strategies published in the past twelve months have laid important groundwork for Australia's fashion and textile manufacturing future. Both are ambitious, evidence-based, and genuinely industry-led and they both create a policy platform from which a print-on-demand manufacturing strategy could be built.

The NSW Fashion Sector Strategy 2025–2028, released in August 2025, is the first state-level strategy developed specifically for the fashion industry (NSW Government, 2025). Its smart factory pilot includes an explicit commitment to support designers developing "short run collections and made to order popular designs on demand with minimum waste" (NSW Government, 2025). The language of on-demand production as a waste-reduction mechanism is already embedded in state policy. The next step is connecting that infrastructure vision to the global market signal showing that made-to-order fashion is one of the highest-growth channels in the world. Positioning the smart factory as a gateway to that market would make this an opportunity for existing and future NSW designers.

The Australian Fashion Council's National Manufacturing Strategy for Australian Fashion and Textiles 2026–2036, released in March 2026, is a comprehensive document (Australian Fashion Council & R.M.Williams, 2026)  that offers genuine insight into future opportunities. Developed through fourteen national consultations with over 300 participants and informed by independent economic modelling from RMIT University, it sets out a ten-year roadmap built on three pillars: activating demand through procurement reform, securing the workforce, and accelerating advanced technology adoption. Economic modelling projects a $1.4 billion cumulative uplift over five years if the strategy's settings are fully delivered, growing TCF manufacturing from $2.6 billion to approximately $2.9 billion (Australian Fashion Council & R.M.Williams, 2026). 

That is a serious and defensible ambition, and one that three interconnected market opportunities could extend further. I'd argue that contract manufacturing, universities as latent manufacturing partners, and near-shoring could readily sit alongside the strategy's existing pillars as the commercial channels through which its investment logic is activated.

Pillar one: contract manufacturing as shared infrastructure

I live in a wine-growing region and have watched the profound effect of contract processing on the development and growth of small producers. A significant share of Australian wine production occurs under contract processing arrangements: a grape grower or small brand accesses a winery's processing infrastructure without owning it. The winery runs the crush, the fermentation and the barrel programme while the brand concentrates on the quality of their grapes and the stories they build around their products.  This model has been fundamental to building regional wine identity and enabling small producers to reach market without prohibitive capital investment.

Imagine what an equivalent model could do for fashion manufacturing. A brand wanting to produce an on-demand collection in Australia currently faces a binary choice: invest in equipment, or go offshore. A mature contract manufacturing ecosystem, offering access to shared digital textile printing, on-demand cutting, and fulfilment infrastructure on a fee-for-service basis, would remove that barrier entirely.

The AFC strategy already calls for shared advanced manufacturing hubs and co-investment in modern machinery, explicitly identifying the absence of shared facilities as one of three interconnected technology constraints for the sector (Australian Fashion Council & R.M.Williams, 2026). The enabling technologies for POD contract manufacturing — digital textile printing, robotic cutting, integrated fulfilment  fit precisely within that hub model.

The commercial access layer of fee-for-service, contract-based, open to brands that want to produce here without owning the means of production is the design detail that could make those hubs financially viable and nationally significant. The National Reconstruction Fund's $15 billion mandate to diversify and transform Australia's industrial capability (National Reconstruction Fund Corporation, 2023) represents a clear potential capital pathway for this kind of enabling infrastructure.

Pillar two: universities as latent manufacturing partners

Australia's universities hold significant textile manufacturing capability that is rarely activated as a commercial asset. It is exciting to consider how much infrastructure already exists, and how partnering could produce a shorter path than building from scratch.

Deakin University's Future Fibres Facility at its Waurn Ponds campus in Geelong houses the largest fibre research group in the southern hemisphere, with more than 110 researchers, integrating fibre production and yarn processing equipment with specialised knitting and weaving machines (Textile World, 2023). Its ARC Research Hub for Future Fibres is in its second phase, explicitly targeting fashion applications alongside automotive and mining sectors (Textile Technology, 2024).

UNSW's Textiles Studio at its Paddington campus includes direct-to-garment printing, digital embroidery, large-format sublimation printing, screen printing, and is adding re-use technologies including industrial textile shredders (UNSW Making, n.d.). RMIT's School of Fashion and Textiles brings deep research capability in sustainable textiles, circular economy applications, and knitted textile structures (RMIT University, n.d.).

A recent demonstration of what that partnership model can look like comes from Deakin's Institute for Frontier Materials, whose collaboration in the development of eqwools™ technology, enables 100% Merino wool to be spun on conventional cotton systems. This product was showcased at an Austrade-hosted Australian Wool Seminar in Bangladesh in early 2026, drawing over 150 textile industry stakeholders and generating concrete conversations about trial orders and blend development (Mirage News, 2026). 

The significance of eqwools™ is not just technical: it means Bangladeshi mills can work with Australian Merino without significant new capital investment, removing a longstanding barrier between Australian fibre and near-shore production. It is a vivid example of university-originated IP activating a near-shoring opportunity and it offers a model for what targeted industry partnership between Australian research institutions and regional manufacturers could achieve at scale.

In adjacent sectors, university fabrication labs and shared research infrastructure have been successfully opened to industry, particularly in advanced manufacturing, biomedical research, and aerospace. Fashion manufacturing has yet to have its equivalent moment, but the conditions for it are in place. Universities have a strong incentive to deepen industry engagement and generate applied research outcomes. Brands wanting to produce circular, verified, on-demand collections in Australia need access to the equipment and expertise these facilities hold - even if it is as testbeds in the first instance. 

Pillar three: near-shoring and the circular advantage

Print-on-demand intersects with a third strategic opportunity: Australia's position as a natural near-shoring hub for Asia-Pacific.

Vietnam, Indonesia, and Bangladesh are rapidly building advanced, traceability-ready manufacturing capability. Australia's proximity to these markets creates a compelling on-demand production opportunity; near-shore production that can compress lead times, improve supply chain legibility and reduce the emissions footprint of offshore production while maintaining the quality and compliance standards Australian brands and institutional buyers require (IndexBox, 2026).

This is a transitional model that strengthens, rather than competes with, the case for building onshore capability. Additionally, it becomes increasingly attractive as the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation shapes what supply chain documentation global buyers will require from 2027 (European Commission, 2024).

The circular dimension threads through all three pillars. Print-on-demand's defining characteristic of producing only what has been ordered,  is one of the most direct responses to the overproduction problem at the heart of fashion's material waste crisis. But circularity in POD is not guaranteed by the production model alone. It depends on what the garment is made from, how the substrate was produced, what the printing process uses and discharges, and what happens to the product at end of life.

A made-to-order item produced from virgin polyester with plastisol inks and no take-back pathway is not circular in any meaningful sense. It just has a tidier inventory position. The brands that will compete most effectively in the on-demand channel and thereby command the price premiums that verified circular practice supports,  are those that can make their circular credentials legible and verifiable, not just describable.

The workforce and education dimension

Hand in hand with realising this vision is the recognition that these opportunties require a different kind of practitioner to those that traditional garment manufacturing has produced. The on-demand model rewards fluency across digital production workflows, data systems, supply chain traceability, regulatory compliance, design and brand management simultaneously. These capabilities exist in the Australian education system; they are not yet consistently assembled in a single graduate profile.

New educational models are now emerging that treat this fluency as a core capability rather than an add-on, recognising that the near-shoring opportunity, the ESPR implementation window, the rise of Digital Product Passports, and the on-demand production model are most powerful when understood together as a coherent strategic framework (European Commission, 2024). Developing graduates who are equally capable in circular compliance and creative direction is not just a curriculum question, it is part of the infrastructure investment that will determine whether Australia builds for this market or continues to consume it from a distance.

Building the next layer

Australia's manufacturing strategies are working on the right foundations. Procurement reform, workforce skills transfer, shared manufacturing infrastructure and fibre-to-fibre recycling capability are genuine structural priorities for a sector that has shed capability for decades. The AFC strategy's projection of over 1,000 new skilled jobs and an additional $212 million in annual wages by 2031 reflects a serious and achievable ambition (Australian Fashion Council & R.M.Williams, 2026). These strategies deserve implementation, investment, and the broad industry collaboration they have called for.

Print-on-demand, near-shoring, and contract manufacturing are not alternatives to that work, rather, they are some of the channels through which demand for Australian-made, verifiably circular garments will flow in the next decade. The groundwork has been laid with care and ambition. There is every reason to build on it.

You can read Kelly's original analysis at Ragtrader: Print-on-demand: The fashion channel with a 25% CAGR.