About Safety Solutions

Safety Solutions

Overview

Safety Solutions is an Australian trade publication for workplace health and safety, published by WF Media, the business-to-business publishing arm of Westwick-Farrow Media. Its website, safetysolutions.net.au, describes its remit as "news, insight and product innovations in industrial work health and safety", and it is written for the people responsible for keeping industrial workplaces safe: safety managers and WHS professionals, operations and site managers, and the small and medium business owners who carry direct responsibility for compliance in sectors such as manufacturing, construction, mining and logistics.

The publication began as a free print magazine serving the industrial safety market and today operates as a digital brand — a continuously updated news and features website supported by an email news bulletin. Its coverage sits at the practical end of the safety profession: prosecution outcomes and regulator campaigns, changes to Australian Standards, protective equipment and machine-guarding technology, training and certification, and the management systems that sit behind day-to-day compliance. Although the print edition ended in 2017, the Safety Solutions name, website and readership have continued under WF Media, and the site was publishing new material throughout 2026.

History

The Safety Solutions magazine had been published since 2002, according to the SafetyAtWorkBlog's record of the Australian OHS publishing scene, and it was a consistent presence in the market for a decade and a half. Published by Westwick-Farrow Media, it was a free, controlled-circulation trade title with an advertorial-supported model, aimed principally at small business owners and safety professionals in the manufacturing and industrial sectors.

In November 2016 the NSCA Foundation and Westwick-Farrow Media announced a new publishing arrangement for National Safety, the journal of the NSCA Foundation, under which Westwick-Farrow took on that title. As part of the same restructure, the Safety Solutions print magazine ceased publishing from March 2017, with its content and resources channelled into the enlarged National Safety magazine, which combined the NSCA Foundation membership with Safety Solutions' subscriber base in print — the two publishers described the merged title as having a total distribution of over 8,000 printed copies per issue.

The publisher behind the title has a longer history of its own. Westwick-Farrow Media was founded in 1981 by Adrian Farrow and Edwin Westwick with What's New in Electronics, building the business on a "What's New" product-news format in which supplier product information was paired with a reader enquiry service, and then extending that model into other professional sectors, including workplace safety. Safety Solutions, launched into that portfolio in 2002, applied the format to the safety market: practical editorial for working safety professionals, supported by supplier advertising and product information.

The Safety Solutions brand itself, however, did not close. Its website continued as one of WF Media's online industry brands, and the publisher has continued to invest in it: in a December 2023 press release, WF Media reported that Safety Solutions' email news bulletin subscription base had grown 157 per cent during 2023, among the stronger results across its portfolio. The site remains in active publication — its article stream carried new stories dated through July and August 2026 when this profile was prepared, covering regulator activity, standards changes and safety research from across Australia.

Content and Coverage

Safety Solutions organises its coverage into topic streams that mirror the working concerns of its readers. Business coverage includes training and certification, drug and alcohol testing, and the management of safety systems and software. Product and hazard streams cover personal protective equipment, working at height, machine safety, hazardous goods and materials handling. Across all of them runs a steady diet of news: prosecutions and fines handed down by state regulators, new guidance from bodies such as SafeWork NSW and SafeWork SA, Australian Standards revisions, and research findings relevant to industrial workplaces.

Recent coverage illustrates the mix. In mid-2026 the site reported a $1.75 million fine — the highest ever imposed under Western Australia's workplace safety laws — following a death involving defective lifting equipment; a New South Wales prosecution over a 2.8-metre fall through a skylight void that drew a $390,000 fine; a $140,000 fine after a worker was ejected from a mobile elevated work platform; and updated silica dust guidance for doctors issued by the Australian CDC. It also covered regulator campaigns, including SafeWork NSW's "It's the safe way or no way" campaign aimed at workers aged 18 to 54 in construction, agriculture, trades and food delivery, and SafeWork SA's first major public awareness campaign in more than 15 years, launched in April 2026. Feature and analysis pieces run alongside the news: an examination of occupational exoskeletons, an opinion piece on the future of psychosocial risk management, a procurement-focused analysis arguing that hand protection should be bought as a risk-engineering outcome rather than as a commodity, a feature on how WHS software is changing incident reporting and risk management, reporting on the New South Wales SES State Disaster Rescue Challenge, in which more than 70 responders tackled eight simulated emergency scenarios, and reporting on data showing 222 worker fatalities in 2025, the highest annual figure since 2012. Product innovation coverage — pedestrian alert systems for mining and smelting sites, upgraded training programs for mobile elevating work platforms responding to revised standards AS/NZS 1418.10:2025 and AS 2550.10:2025 — reflects the brand's long-standing supplier-supported model.

Audience and Reach

The publication's audience is the Australian industrial safety community: WHS and OHS managers, safety advisers and consultants, human resources and compliance staff with safety responsibilities, and owners and managers of small and medium industrial businesses. Its historical centre of gravity, as a print magazine, was the manufacturing sector, and its online coverage continues to lean toward industrial settings — factories, warehouses, mines, construction sites and utilities — rather than office-based industries.

No audited circulation or traffic figure for Safety Solutions is asserted here. The most specific historical figure in the public record is the brand's own: in 2016 its website invited readers to join "over 40,000 fellow industrial and technology professionals across Australia & New Zealand who are members of the WF Media network" — a figure for the publisher's whole network rather than for Safety Solutions alone, and one that should be read as a publisher claim of that period. WF Media's reported 157 per cent growth in the brand's email bulletin subscriptions during 2023 indicates an actively rebuilt digital audience, but the publisher has not released a current audited total for the title.

Digital Presence

The centre of the publication today is its website, which carries a latest-news stream, a features and articles stream, and topic hubs for each of its coverage areas, updated on a regular weekly-or-better cadence. Readers can subscribe to the Safety Solutions email news bulletin through the site, and the title sits within WF Media's broader network of industry websites, through which the publisher cross-promotes its brands to registered professional audiences in sectors including manufacturing, electrical, scientific, healthcare and technology markets.

Ownership and Organisation

Safety Solutions is published by WF Media, the business-to-business brand of Westwick-Farrow Media, a Sydney-based specialist publisher founded in 1981 by Adrian Farrow and Edwin Westwick with the title What's New in Electronics. WF Media's portfolio of professional titles includes Lab + Life Scientist, What's New in Electronics, Hospital + Healthcare, Sustainability Matters, Process Technology, Critical Comms, Technology Decisions and GovTech Review, among others. The publisher is Geoff Hird. The company's publishing operations are based at North Ryde in Sydney, and Safety Solutions is produced within that shared B2B editorial and commercial structure rather than as a standalone newsroom.

Contact and Availability

Safety Solutions is available free online at safetysolutions.net.au, where readers can browse the news and article streams by topic and register for the email news bulletin. The former print magazine is no longer published; readers seeking the print journal that absorbed its subscriber base in 2017 should look to National Safety. Publisher contact for Safety Solutions is through WF Media, Locked Bag 2226, North Ryde BC NSW 1670, via the WF Media website at wfmedia.com.au, which handles advertising and commercial enquiries for the brand.