Arnott's Pay Rates 2026: Production, Trades & Shift Pay

Arnott's manufactures biscuits and snack foods from factories including its long-running Virginia site in Queensland, and sits within a wider snacking and grocery ownership group that also includes other Australian food businesses. Its own biscuit-manufacturing workforce is mostly permanent, working across production, packaging, maintenance and quality roles.

The Food, Beverage and Tobacco Manufacturing Award 2020 (Levels 1–6) sets the floor for factory roles. Our corpus holds only one registered Arnott's enterprise agreement, covering the Virginia biscuit factory — shown below where it applies — so for other Arnott's sites the award tables below are what should be on the payslip.

The federal awards relevant to Arnott's roles:

• Food, Beverage and Tobacco Manufacturing Award 2020 (MA000073)

Workforce snapshot. In the 2024-25 Workplace Gender Equality Agency reports, Arnott's Biscuits Limited reported 1,818 employees (part of the Snacking Investments Holdco Pty Limited group, 2,221 employees in total, 4.4% casual and 42.8% women). Source: WGEA 2025 Public Data File, data.gov.au (CC-BY 3.0 AU).

Production, packing and plant staff sit on the Food, Beverage and Tobacco Manufacturing Award 2020 (MA000073). The adult minimums are:

Levels rise with the skills and qualifications the job requires, from Level 1 (entry, first three months) through production and trade-qualified roles. Shift, overtime and weekend loadings apply on top; plant agreements restructure these and sit above the ladder.

Source: Fair Work Commission modern awards pay database, current-operative rates (1 July 2026 annual wage review). Casual figures add the 25% casual loading.

Enterprise agreements set rates above the award, with their own classification structures and allowances. Current Arnott's agreements in our corpus (1 in total):

• Arnott's Biscuits (Virginia) Enterprise Agreement 2024 — approved June 2024, nominal expiry 24 March 2027.

We don't reproduce agreement dollar figures here — the agreement covering your site, state and stream is the document to read. Find your agreement, then your classification, then your pay point, and compare it with your payslip. The award tables on this page are the floor every one of these agreements must beat.

The patterns worth checking on a Arnott's payslip:

• Wrong C-level for the skills and qualifications actually used.
• Shift and overtime loadings absorbed into flat rates.
• Unpaid pre-start, PPE and handover time.
• Labour-hire pay gaps against directly employed staff doing the same job.

Match your payslip to your classification in the agreement (or the award tables above), and price any gap with our back-pay calculator. Raise it in writing with payroll or your manager first — most underpayments are fixed at that step. Unresolved, the Fair Work Ombudsman (13 13 94) recovers underpayments at no cost, up to six years back, and your union can run the claim for you. Not sure which instrument covers you? Ask our AI advisor with your role and location.