Victoria Australia Post Wine Service updates | 2 July 2025

Background - Victoria Legislation

The state of Victoria (VIC) has had legislation in place since 2017 requiring the following for alcohol delivery:

If the receiver of alcohol is a first time purchaser from an online company then the delivery driver must check the the order is delivered to the named recipient of the order, and check the ID of that individual
If the receiver of alcohol is taking possession of a gift, purchased by a third party, then the delivery driver must check the the order is delivered to the named recipient of the order, and check the ID of that individual

For many years carriers either did not comply with this legislation or were manually implementing a sticker system to convey what was required of the delivery driver when handing over the order to the recipient. This is not ideal and it does not facilitate automated outcomes based on legislative needs.

See: https://www.vic.gov.au/supplying-liquor-person-who-makes-premises-request

What has changed

From a legislative point of view nothing as changed. Victoria still has this requirements outlined above, and carriers either don’t comply or have a manual process to do so. From an operational point of view, Aus Post now has the ability to accept information from merchants to ensure they comply with this old legislation, upon delivering alcohol when using eParcel wine services.

What are the Aus Post’s wine service codes?

3O85, 3P85, 3V85, 7O35, 7O85

How will Shippit accomodate this new feature?

Shippit wants to offer merchants the ability to use this new feature, that Aus Post has released, and by giving merchants the ability to flag with us when a purchaser of alcohol is either:

a first time recipient of alcohol from that company
a gift recipient of alcohol from that company

Merchant responsibility

Shippit will off the means for merchants to identify orders that fall into one of the above categories. Merchants must have set up internal logic to confirm with Shippit that an order is intended for a gift recipient or a first time purchaser. The logic should look as follows:

If the answer to the above logic = YES then merchants should amend the v3. order API payload to include the “identity_on_delivery” flag as part of the features array.

Example

{
    "order": {
        "authority_to_leave": "No",
        "courier_type": "standard",
        "delivery_address": "U 1 88 Victoria Rd",
        "features":["identity_on_delivery"],
        "receiver_contact_number": "0415320950",
        "delivery_country_code": "AU",
        "delivery_postcode": "3000",
        "delivery_state": "VIC",
        "delivery_suburb": "Melbourne",
        "parcel_attributes": [
            {
          "weight": 2.22,
                "depth": 0.20,
                "length": 0.34,
                "width": 0.20,
                "qty": 1.0 }
                
        ],
        "product_attributes": [
            {
                "product_line_id": "1",
                "quantity": 1,
                "sku": "648932590",
                "title": "Advent Blue T-shirt, Large"
            }
        ],
        "receiver_name": "Test Shippit",
        "delivery_company": "Company",
        "retailer_invoice": "Test123",
        "retailer_reference": "130496392",
        "user_attributes": {
            "email": "[email protected]",
            "first_name": "Test",
            "last_name": "Shippit",
            "mobile": "0415320950"
        },
        "validate": true
    },
    "version": "3"
}

Shippit’s responsibility

When Shippit receives this flag it will check the following:

Is the order going to a delivery address in Victoria?
Is the Aus Post product code a wine product?

If both questions are true then Shippit will flag this order with Aus Post, resulting in service code 49 being applied for that order. If either of the above questions are false, Shippit will not flag the order with Aus Post, and will instead treat the order as BAU.

FAQ

Do I have to change the ATL preference on the order?
Shippit will take care of this. If the order is marked as identity_on_delivery we will change the ATL option to suit the order so that it complies with Aus Post requirements for Liquor Licensing Victoria

What is service code 49?
Service code 49 ensures that the delivery driver IDs the person named on the label. If that person is not available, regardless of age, the order will be carded to the nearest post office where the names recipient will have up to 10 days to collect the order

How do I know that this service code is active?
The eParcel label produced will reflect service code 49 in the barcode:

Is this only for Victoria or do I need to flag orders with you outside Victoria?

You can build out this flag for as you see fit. Currently, Shippit will only forward the flag to Aus Post if the destination of the order is in Victoria, to comply with legislation in that state. If the order is not going to a VIC destination, we will not send the flag regardless of its inclusion in our payload.

If further changes are made whereby other states opt into the same arrangement as Victoria, Shippit will adjust it’s logic to send the information to the other states.

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