Rich Listers, Chemist Warehouse in ‘game changer’ pharmacy plan
The wealthy couple who built cancer care giant Icon Group before selling it to private equity are partnering up with Chemist Warehouse for what they describe as a “game changer” idea to operate pharmacies inside Australia’s hospitals.
Cathie Reid and Stuart Giles – with a fortune of $550 million according to the Financial Review Rich List – say the new venture “has the potential to be the biggest thing we have done yet”.
Cathie Reid and Stuart Giles are starting a new hospital pharmacy venture with Chemist Warehouse. Paul Harris
Dubbed Chemist Warehouse Hospital Pharmacy, the business is an attempt to break into the lucrative in-hospital chemist industry alongside Jack Gance and Mario Verrocchi, the billionaires behind Chemist Warehouse.
Chemist Warehouse, which runs more than 500 stores and had sales exceeding $3 billion last year, dominates the retail pharmacy sector, but has not yet moved into the hospital pharmacy space, which is more fragmented.
Hospital pharmacies are increasingly of interest to groups including ASX-listed Ramsay Health Care and Ebos, the largest provider of outsourced pharmacy services to hospitals.
“We are starting in Australia but not limiting ourselves to only Australia,” Ms Reid told The Australian Financial Review. “Chemist Warehouse has stores overseas. Looking at the Chemist Warehouse track record, they don’t go into anything with a view of being passive in it. They’re in the business of being category killers.”
A hospital pharmacy normally dispenses more complex, and more expensive medicines compared with local chemists that retail everything from nappies to toothbrushes and throat lozenges. Hospital pharmacies compete for contracts issued by the private hospital operators, including the
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