Europa Apotheek: Management Takes Over Mail-order Pharmacy

Managment of Europa Apotheek Venlo has taken over all shares of the company from Express Scripts Inc. (St. Louis) within the framework of a management-buy-out. It was agreed that no details of the contract or the purchase price would be disclosed. However, just a few weeks ago Express Scripts wrote off $11.5m of the mail-order pharmacy.

New owners – alongside institutional investors – are founders of Europa Apotheek Venlo Michael Köhler and Klaus Gritschneder, founders of shop-apotheke.com Dr. Peter Weber, Stephan Weber and Marc Fisher, pharmacist in charge Theresa Holler and CFO Dr. Ulrich Wandel. For future growth, the new owners will provide the company with a two-digit million amount.

The Dutch mail-order pharmacy wants to generate growth in three core areas: online presence, cooperation with German private and statutory health insurances and the patient care program Smart. Europa Apotheek is contemplating acquisitions as well. The mail-order pharmacy (business volume in 2011: EUR 250m) considers itself No. 2 in the German mail-order pharmacy market.

Comment: Management takes over Europa Apotheek. Shortly after management took over Vitalsana and DocMorris was acquired by Zur Rose. Now the persons in charge have to position themselves quickly since the market finds itself in a phase of orientation. However, management has not mentioned the pick-up business as a future core area. Only recently, Europa Apotheek had to bear the termination of partnership with German drugstore chain dm.

At this stage all market participants have to find new ways of offering benefits to customers. Recently, bonus programs like „bonus for participating in surveys on utilization of medicines“ have been declared inadmissible by a German district court.

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