It’s the small business equivalent of chaos theory. A bureaucrat snaps their fingers, and somewhere an SME’s balance sheet shudders.

That’s what happened to Riaan de Beer, owner of a Brisbane-based business that makes the South African meat product, biltong. When new regulations were introduced requiring allergens to be listed on food labels in bold type, he quickly realised he needed a new printer, at a cost of $30,000. That’s on top of what he estimated to be a doubling of compliance costs over the past five years.