At the two Adelaide ALDI stores we visited on 5 August 2026 (Mawson Lakes and Norwood), every Mamia wipe pack on the shelf was labelled Made in China. Not most of the range. All of it, at both stores. Product images on ALDI's own website show Mamia packaging marked Made in Australia. The website's fine print makes sure that difference is nobody's problem but yours. Nothing in this post alleges anything unlawful. That, as you'll see, is rather the point.
Why we checked
This is the fifth instalment in our shelf audit series. Since April we've walked the wipes aisles at Woolworths, Coles, Chemist Warehouse and Foodland, checking the country of origin printed on every pack and mapping the results. The pattern so far: imported products take up between 74% and 100% of the visible shelf space, with Australian-made wipes ranging from 26% of the shelf (Chemist Warehouse) down to zero (Foodland). You can read the full series in our four-retailer audit.
ALDI was the audit we'd promised and hadn't yet done, and it turned out to be the most interesting one. ALDI runs an almost entirely private-label range, which means the wipes aisle is essentially one brand: Mamia. So the origin question has one answer per store. Here it is.
What we found
We checked the country of origin statement on the back of every Mamia wipe product on the shelf at both stores, every box, every variant, no sampling. The range included water wipes, scented baby wipes, fragrance-free baby wipes, antibacterial hand and face wipes, and 480-pack bulk cartons.
| Store | Date | Made in China | Made in Australia |
|---|---|---|---|
| ALDI Mawson Lakes | 5 Aug 2026 | 100% | 0% |
| ALDI Norwood | 5 Aug 2026 | 100% | 0% |
Every single pack, across both stores, carried the same three words: Made in China.
Does ALDI's website say Mamia wipes are made in Australia?
Some of the product photography on ALDI's Australian website shows Mamia packaging marked Made in Australia. We archived those pages as they appeared on 5 August 2026. On the shelves we walked the same week, one hundred percent of the range said Made in China.
How can both be true at once? ALDI's website answers that itself, in the product disclaimer that sits beneath every listing:
"In a small number of cases the product information may differ from the product available for purchase at your nearest ALDI store. Please read product labels before purchasing."
Read that twice, because it's doing precisely what it was drafted to do. It converts the difference between what the website shows and what the shelf sells from ALDI's problem into yours. If you saw Made in Australia online and brought home Made in China, well, you were told to read the label.
We found the same mechanism at work in the small details. ALDI's website describes the scented baby wipes as containing "natural aloe, chamomile and Vitamin E". The ingredient list printed on the pack we photographed contains no Vitamin E. It lists pomegranate extract instead. A small thing, but the pattern is the same: the website says one thing, the pack says another, and the disclaimer has already excused the gap.
Let us be completely clear about the legal position, because it matters. We are not alleging ALDI has broken any law, and we don't believe it has. The disclaimer sees to that, and it was written by people who are very good at their jobs. Our point is smaller and, we think, more uncomfortable: for a product parents wipe on newborn skin, "technically accurate once you've read the fine print" is a remarkably low bar. In our view, shoppers deserve the country of origin story straight, printed on the front, no homework required. Whether ALDI's approach clears the bar the law sets is not in question. Whether it clears the bar you'd set is yours to answer.
Is ALDI's "100% Renewable Power" sign misleading?
No, and that's worth sitting with for a moment.
At Mawson Lakes, a large sign hangs directly above the Mamia bay: 100% Renewable Power. The claim is real. ALDI's Australian stores have run on certified renewable electricity since 2021, which is a genuine achievement that other retailers should match. Credit where it's due.
Now stand where we stood and look at what the sign presides over. Every product beneath it was manufactured in China and shipped roughly 10,000 kilometres to reach an Adelaide shelf, on cargo vessels that burn heavy fuel oil. The sign describes the store's electricity: the lights, the fridges, the checkouts. It says nothing about the products, because it doesn't have to.
The electricity is renewable. The supply chain is not. Both facts are true. Only one of them gets a billboard, and the billboard hangs over the other one. When you're weighing what "sustainable" means in a supermarket aisle, the question worth asking is which footprint you actually take home in your trolley. We've written before about why making wipes in Australia cuts the transport emissions of every single pack. This shelf is the clearest photograph of that argument we have ever taken.
Who makes Mamia wipes?
Mamia is ALDI's private-label baby brand, which means ALDI doesn't manufacture the wipes itself. They're produced by a contract manufacturer. Which one? The pack doesn't say. The only entity named is ALDI Stores itself, with a distribution address in Minchinbury NSW. So the honest answer to "who makes Mamia wipes" is: the pack won't tell you, and the website recommends you "contact the manufacturer via the contact details on the packaging", which leads you straight back to ALDI. What the pack will tell you is where: China.
For comparison, the recognisable brands we've covered earlier in this series (Huggies, Curash, Tooshies) are also made overseas, primarily in China and Singapore, something we covered in Where Are Your Wipes Really Made? The wipes made in Australia (GAIA, Bunjie, and ourselves at Kine) exist. Their shelf presence depends entirely on where you shop, and at these two stores it was zero.
What's in Mamia baby wipes?
Here's the full ingredient list as printed on the scented baby wipes pack we photographed at Mawson Lakes:
Water, Gluconolactone, Sodium Citrate, Glycerin, Sodium Benzoate, Citric Acid, Polysorbate 20, Fragrance, Punica Granatum (Pomegranate) Fruit Extract, Aloe Barbadensis (Aloe Vera) Leaf Juice, Chamomilla Recutita (Matricaria) Flower Extract, Polyglyceryl-4 Caprate.
The pack states the wipes are pH balanced, soap free, hypoallergenic, dermatologically tested and methylisothiazolinone free. Note what the list doesn't include: the Vitamin E that ALDI's website description promises.
And note what nothing on the pack covers: the wipe fabric itself. The pack carries an FSC Mix label, which relates to responsibly sourced wood fibre, but nowhere states what the cloth is actually made of or whether it contains plastic fibres. This matters more than most shoppers realise. Many conventional wipes are made wholly or partly from plastic, which is why they persist in landfill and waterways for years. If a pack doesn't say what the cloth is made from, there is no way to know from the shelf, and at $1.89 for 80 wipes, it's reasonable to ask why the answer isn't printed proudly on the front.
Are Mamia wipes flushable?
No, and to ALDI's credit, the pack doesn't pretend otherwise. Printed on the back of the scented baby wipes, in plain terms: "Never flush these wipes down the toilet."
That single sentence is worth more than most of the marketing in this category. Wipes that can't break down are a leading cause of sewer blockages, which cost Australian water utilities millions every year. None of the packs we checked carried certification to AS/NZS 5328, the Australian standard for flushable products, which remains rare on Australian shelves. If you want to understand what that certification actually tests, we've written a plain-English explainer.
The caveats (as always)
- This audit covers two stores, one visit each, on a single day. Ranges and stock change.
- We recorded what was printed on the packs on the shelf and what ALDI's website displayed on the same date, both photographed and archived. Formulations, sourcing and packaging can change without notice, and ALDI's own disclaimer says as much.
- We measured the range on display, not sales volume.
- ALDI periodically runs Special Buys that may include products outside the core range.
- Nothing in this post alleges unlawful conduct by ALDI or anyone else. It reports what we saw, photographed and archived, and offers our opinion on it, clearly labelled as opinion.
This is an indicative picture, not a definitive market analysis. But two stores with identical results, on top of four other retailer audits pointing the same direction, is a pattern worth paying attention to.
Where Kine fits
We make wipes in Australia from 100% plant-based fibres, and we print both facts on the front of the pack, along with our AS/NZS 5328 flushability certification on the Body and Baby Cloths. No disclaimer required. We started this series because we kept being asked where wipes are really made and found the answer surprisingly hard to see on a shelf. Six audits in, you can see it clearly. Next stop: Big W.
If you've done your own audit at a local store, or you're a retailer who'd like to talk about ranging Australian-made options, we'd like to hear from you at ask@kine.com.au.
Published by Mark Yates, Founder, Kine Australia. All packs and web pages photographed and archived 5 August 2026. Last verified: August 2026.
