BELFAST medicine distribution giant Sangers NI has been sold as part of a £300 million deal from which is parent company will use the proceeds to reduce its debt.
Sangers owner UDG Healthcare confirmed yesterday that it is selling its drug distribution units across Ireland and a unit in its commercial services business to US drug wholesaler and Fortune 500 firm McKesson for €407.5m
McKesson owns LloydsPharmacy, the largest pharmacy chain in the country, with nearly 100 branches and close to 1,000 employees.
UDG Healthcare said it would sell its United Drug supply chain and MASTA businesses to focus on its higher-growth, higher-margin international healthcare services businesses.
It said the move will transform the firm into a more focused international healthcare services business.
The company also said that its chief executive Liam FitzGerald would retire next March after 15 years and will be replaced by current chief operating officer Brendan McAtamney.
UDG Healthcare’s strategy over the last few years has been to focus on its higher-growth, higher-margin businesses such as Ashfield (contract sales and marketing comms), Sharp (packaging division) and Aquilant (sales and distribution to Medtech industry).
Sangers, which delivers close to 100,000 pharmaceutical products a day to high street chemists across the north, is a hugely profitable company.
Indeed its latest set of accounts filed at Companmies House in Belfast reveal that it made a whopping pre-tax profit of £77.6 million in the year to September 2014 on a turnover of £221 million.
Headquartered at Marshalls Road in east Belfast, Sangers also kept its employee numbers steady over the year at 223, broken down into 121 warehouse staff, 46 in administration and 56 in delivery.
Its wages bill came in at £6.58 million while the company directors were paid a total of £589,316, with the highest-paid receiving a salary package worth £156,772 (down from ££178,163 in 2013).
Sangers has been supplying pharmaceutical and healthcare products to retail and hospital pharmacies in Northern Ireland for 150 years.
Founded as a retail pharmacy operating from Victoria Street in Belfast in 1881 the company was originally known as Thomas McMullan and Co, but changed its name to Sangers in the early 1980s.
Its Irish parent United Drug Chemical Co was established in 1948 in Ballina by a group of pharmacists determined to find a more reliable supply of medicines.
