Amazon have announced that they are now ready to launch their Australian Marketplace online store. Sales in Australia will be fulfilled from Amazon's newly built 24,000sqm warehouse in Melbourne's Dandenong South, finished just in time to hit the market for Christmas sales. Australian's currently buy around 7.4% of their items online, but this figure is expected to double to 15% over the course of the next five years.

It is expected that Amazon's encroachment into the Australia marketplace will have an impact on local retailers and increase the amount of competition. Australian companies are likely to need to improve in areas such as distribution, digital marketing, and multichannel platforms in order to stay in the game. Just how successful Amazon are in Australia, only time will tell. The rise and rise of Amazon's brand globally does certainly present a large challenge to Australian retailers.

Today we bid a fond farewell to John Nguyen after 7 years of working here at Tomax Logistics. John has been a very well liked and important member of the Tomax team during his time here, and we are sad to see him go. John is trying his hand in a different industry working with his brother, and we wish him all the best. Good luck Johnny and no doubt we'll still see plenty of you over the coming years.

Over the last 6 months Tomax has been busy setting up a new office in the United States. The US market is a very important and strategic market for Tomax and our clients and we will seek to offer the same customer service focussed supply chain solutions in the US, as we do here in Australia. The new office is being set up in Seattle in the north-west state of Washington, strategically placed to be able to integrate closely with our clients in both the USA and Canada. Operations should begin in January/February of 2018 and we will be in touch further once everything is ready. If you would like any further information about the services that will be offered by Tomax Logistics in the USA please contact us via info@tomaxgroup.com.

The Australian Border Force have now introduced exemptions for Australian Trusted Traders in relation to the requirement to enter for Customs purposes every House Air Way Bill (HAWB) consolidated on a single Master AWB. For non Truted Traders, it is required that every single HAWB is entered separately with Customs along with the related commercial transaction details, and this incurs an Electronic Entry Fee from Customs for every entry. With the new exemption introduced, Trusted Traders can now save hundreds of dollars in entry fees on consolidated airfreights. If you would like more information about the Trusted Trader Program, please contact Paul Watson on 1300 186 629 (1300 1 TOMAX).

If you are an importer of wood and or wood fibre products, including paper and cardboard etc., you would be well aware of the Illegal Logging Prohibition Act 2012. The Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR) will end the existing *soft start* compliance approach on 31 December 2017. As of 1 January 2018 importers may face penalties for breaches of their obligations.

If You Have Done Nothing - then please do this: Ensure that your suppliers of regulated producted complete the Declaration of Wood Materials Origin Supply, and email the completed supplier declaration to Paul Watson - paul@tomax.com.au as soon as possible.

Amongst other products, this information relates to the following commodities:
- Chapter 44 - sawn wood, veneers, particleboard, fibreboard, densified wood, casks, barrels, parquetry, doors, joinery;
- Chapter 48 - newsprint, writing paper, sanitary products, labels, stickers, copy paper, coated paperboard, coated products, cigarette paper, envelopes, cards, cartons, boxes, booklets;
- Chapter 94 - seats, furniture, wooden pre-fabricated buildings.

Here are a few funnies to help get you to the weekend.

1. Why did Star Wars episodes 4,5 and 6 come before 1,2 and 3?
Because in charge of scheduling, Yoda was.

2. A frog goes to a fortune teller to find out if he will ever be lucky in love.
The fortune teller reads his palm and tells the frog, "I have good news and I have bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"
The frog asks for the good news first.
The fortune teller says, "You are going to meet the most beautiful girl, who is going to be very interested in you and will want to know all about you. She will want you to open up for her and you will give her your heart."
"That's great!" says the frog. "But what's the bad news?"
"Well, you're going to meet her in Biology class."

3. I was walking down the street when I was accosted by a particularly dirty and shabby-looking homeless man who asked me for a couple of dollars for dinner.
I took out my wallet, extracted ten dollars and asked,"If I give you this money, will you buy some beer with it instead of dinner?"
"No, I had to stop drinking years ago," the homeless man replied.
"Will you use it to go fishing instead of buying food?" I asked.
"No, I don't waste time fishing," the homeless man said.."I need to spend all my time trying to stay alive."
"Well," I said, "I'm not going to give you money. Instead, I'm going to take you home for a shower and a terrific dinner cooked by my wife."
The homeless man was astounded. "Won't your wife be furious with you for doing that?
I replied, "Don't worry about that. It's important for her to see what a man looks like after he has given up drinking and fishing."