The Duke and Duchess of Sussex previously visited Australia in 2018. Photo / Getty Images
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s occasional foreign jaunts are often described as faux royal tours.
But when the couple land in Australia next month, their itinerary, skewed as it is towards private business interests, will hardly resemble the hand-shaking, ribbon-cutting public duties of old.
The Duke and Duchess have made no secret of the fact that their four-day visit to Sydney and Melbourne is, in part at least, about making money.
“They have to earn a living,” one source said. “They are private citizens and have to pay the bills like anyone else.”
For the Duchess, this means the global expansion of her As Ever brand.
Now “freed from the shackles” of Netflix, her former business partner and investor, she is determined to move at pace and to capitalise on the success of her nascent business selling jams and flower sprinkles.
Australia has been chosen as the next target market and the Duchess will use the forthcoming visit to hold a series of private meetings with potential partners, buyers and marketing executives.
A source close to her told the Telegraph: “We are thinking about the next step in global expansion and Australia has been teed up as the first test market outside the US. It’s the first place we are looking at and having conversations.”
Australia and New Zealand are often considered “low-risk” test markets for English-speaking businesses because of their relatively small populations, Western culture and common language. The UK and Canada are likely to follow as the business grows.
While the Sussexes’ trip has been a year in the planning, it is perfectly timed for the Duchess, who earlier this month announced that she had cut ties with Netflix, having felt increasingly frustrated and restrained by the company’s “cautious” approach.
“She couldn’t do anything, make a decision or move forward without running everything through them and then waiting endlessly for the outcome of meetings,” one source said. “That’s just not her style, she wants to move forward.”
Confirmation of the couple’s visit to Australia was made in a brief statement. It said that the Sussexes would “take part in a number of private, business, and philanthropic engagements”.
The Duke is set to appear at a “workplace mental health summit”, which will explore the need for urgent action to change attitudes.
Lifeline Narrm announced on Wednesday that he would be the keynote speaker at its InterEdge Psychosocial Safety Summit, where he will join VIPs including Jelena Dokić, the tennis player.
Tickets start at £1050 ($2401), rising to more than £9000 ($20,582) for a “platinum” table of eight.
Meanwhile, the Duchess will address ticket-holders at a gala dinner during a women-only retreat at a five-star hotel at Coogee Beach in Sydney, touted as “a girls’ weekend like no other”.
Tickets start at £1400 ($3201) per person and VIP guests are offered front-row seats and a group photo with the Duchess.
The retreat is organised by the Her Best Life podcast, founded by Gemma O’Neill and Jackie “O” Henderson.
The Duchess’ Q&A session will probably focus on her status as a “female founder”, plugging her As Ever brand, as the panel discusses “women trying to grow” and “be their best selves”.
It is all a far cry from the couple’s last visit to Australia, as working royals, in 2018. To the outsider, and to the adoring crowds that greeted them at every turn, it was a wild success.
But behind the scenes, things were rapidly falling apart. While they were away, Jason Knauf, the couple’s press secretary at the time, who did not go on the trip having broken his collarbone, wrote to Simon Case, the Prince of Wales’ private secretary, raising “serious” concerns about the Duchess’ behaviour towards staff.
He said the tour was “very challenging” and suggested that even Samantha Cohen, the Duke’s private secretary and a long-serving palace aide, may be struggling to cope. The Sussexes deny the allegations.
The Sussexes considered the 16-day trip badly organised and believed they were underprepared and not properly briefed.
It did not help that the Duchess, who was still learning the ropes, having only just married into the Royal family, was in the early stages of her first pregnancy with Prince Archie.
All involved are insistent that their return to Australia will be different.
The short trip was initially organised around the speaking engagements and private meetings, with the couple, who these days have to stump up all travel, security and accommodation costs, taking just a skeleton staff.
However, it may now be expanded to take in a handful of further engagements.
The Duke will focus on his Invictus Games charity and will probably spend time with the Australian Defence Force, with which he was embedded in Darwin in 2015.
Australia has announced that it will be launching a bid to host the biennial event again in 2031, marking its first return since 2018.
The couple are also expected to catch up with friends before returning home to California.
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