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How we are funded
Learn more about how we recover costs through fees and charges to fund our work.
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About cost recovery
Cost recovery is a way for government agencies to charge individuals or organisations for the cost of delivering specific services.
As a part of Australian Government policy, we are funded through a cost recovery model.
Our funding
We recover the full cost of running AICIS using the fees and charges we receive each year from introducers (importers or manufacturers) of industrial chemicals. This means that we use the fees and charges paid to us from introducers to fund our regulatory activities and work to administer the scheme.
Our approach follows the Australian Government Charging Framework, which:
- outlines the policies and principles for cost recovery
- explains how it works
- ensures that government services are transparent, fair and efficient.
How we use fees and charges
Following the ‘user pays’ principle, we recover our costs through 2 types of fees and charges:
Fees for services
We charge fees for services when we provide a service to a specific introducer. For example, fees apply when an introducer asks us to:
- evaluate and authorise unlisted chemicals before they are introduced
- update existing listings or add new chemicals to the Australian Inventory of Industrial Chemicals (Inventory)
- authorise the import or export of severely restricted chemicals under international agreements
- process annual applications to list or re-list businesses on the Register of Industrial Chemical Introducers.
Annual registration charges
Every year, anyone who introduces industrial chemicals in Australia must register their business with us and pay an annual registration fee. This flat fee covers the cost of administering the registration application.
Most registrants must also pay an extra charge based on the value of industrial chemicals they introduced in the previous financial year. This charge applies to businesses that introduce chemicals above a certain value threshold and increases depending on their registration level.
We use these annual AICIS registration charges to fund our broader regulatory activities. These activities benefit the whole industrial chemicals sector and are not tied to any single introducer, such as:
- post-market evaluation of industrial chemicals
- compliance monitoring and enforcement
- providing information and recommendations about managing chemical risks
- maintaining best practice and fit-for-purpose regulation
- promoting international harmonisation of chemical standards
- maintaining the Inventory
- enhancing scientific, data and chemical intelligence expertise
- researching and publishing information or statistics
- corporate operations that support us to deliver the scheme.
Read more about our regulatory activities and what we do.
How we set our fees and charges
Our fees and charges are based on the:
- effort required to deliver each activity
- resources needed to carry out the work
- annual volume of activities we perform.
We use an activity-based costing method to allocate both direct and indirect costs to each regulatory activity. Direct costs include labour and supplier expenses linked to specific services, while indirect costs cover overheads like IT, finance, and governance.
We review our fees and charges every year to avoid over or under recovery.
We regularly update and publish the changes in our AICIS CRIS.
Legislation
Our fees and charges are authorised under legislation, which provides the legal framework for basing fees and levies on the value of chemicals introduced each year.
See our list of legislation related to fees and charges.
Cost Recovery Implementation Statement (CRIS)
As a publicly available document, our CRIS makes sure we are accountable and transparent about our funding and costs. It outlines:
- how we determine our fees and charges
- how we’ve used cost recovery for our regulatory work
- how we comply with the charging framework
- our financial and non-financial performance related to cost recovery
- financial forecasts for the current year and 2 upcoming years.
Current CRIS
Download the AICIS CRIS for 2025–26 for the latest details:
Archived CRIS
Access previous versions of the CRIS:
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