Pharmaceutical wholesaling and distribution

Our pharmaceutical wholesale businesses, together with our associates and joint ventures, supply medicines, other healthcare products and related services to over 160,000 pharmacies, doctors, health centres and hospitals from over 370 distribution centres in 21 countries.

Our businesses provide high core service levels to pharmacists in terms of frequency of delivery, product availability, delivery accuracy, timeliness and reliability at competitive prices. We also offer our customers innovative added-value services which help pharmacists develop their own businesses. We consistently deliver high standards of efficiency and effectiveness.

In addition to the wholesale of medicines and other healthcare products, we provide services to pharmaceutical manufacturers who are increasingly seeking to gain greater control over their product distribution while at the same time outsourcing non-core activities. These services include pre-wholesale and contract logistics, direct deliveries to pharmacies, and specialised medicine delivery including related home healthcare.

Scale is very important in pharmaceutical wholesaling. In addition to being the largest pharmaceutical wholesaler/distributor in Europe, Alliance Boots typically ranks as one of the top three in the individual countries in which we operate. In 2010/11 we became the majority shareholder in Hedef Alliance, one of the largest pharmaceutical wholesalers in Turkey, and we significantly strengthened our position in Germany, Europe’s largest pharmaceutical market, following the acquisition of ANZAG.

We continually seek to grow our wholesale and related distribution activities organically and through acquisitions, including investments in associates and joint ventures. These acquisitions are either in current or complementary business areas in countries in which we already operate or in new geographical markets which are typically large, fast growing and where we see the potential for market consolidation.

* Figures are approximations as at 31 March 2011 and include associates and joint ventures.