UK: Pharmacies, Chemists, Drugstores

Alliance Boots plc (LSE: AB.) is a British based pharmaceuticals company, operating as a high street retailer, pharmacist and pharmaceuticals wholesaler. Alliance Boots is the dominant pharmacy chain in Britain with a 17% market share[1]. Retail operations are carried out under the Boots The Chemist and Alliance Pharmacies brandsNote 1. Alliance Boots is also the largest pharmaceuticals wholesaler in the UK through their UniChem subsidiary with a 40% market share. Alliance Boots are a constituent of the FTSE 100.

As the third largest pharmacy chain in Europe, Alliance Boots employs around 100,000 staff and operates around 3,000 retail stores, around 2,700 of these have pharmacies. Around 380 depots support this retail network. Alliance Boots is headquartered in London, England. In terms of retail space, Alliance Boots ranks as one of the largest high street retailers in the UK.

Lloydspharmacy is a pharmacy chain in the UK. It operates over 1,520 pharmacies, located primarily within local communities and health centres.

Lloydspharmacy is owned by Celesio, which recently raised concerns of the July 2006 merger of Alliance Unichem and Boots the Chemist that formed Alliance Boots.

Lloyds pharmacy was founded by Allen Lloyd from Atherstone, England. It is estimated he made a £32 million fortune from the Lloyds Pharmacy empire.

Numark Ltd is a chain of independent pharmacies in the UK. With over 1800 outlets throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland they are the largest such chain in the UK.

Each pharmacy business within Numark is an independent outlet, but membership of Numark allows individual retailers to take advantage of group purchasing deals to reduce their costs. Numark also offers marketing support, including demographic research for product targeting purposes, to its members.

Numark also has a range of Own Brand products such as vitamins, otc medicines and toiletries.

Superdrug is the UK’s second largest health and beauty retail chain (behind Boots) and the sixth largest overall (behind Boots, Tesco, Sainsburys, ASDA and Morrisons). Superdrug is a national company with over 740 stores in the UK employing over 13,000 people with retail jobs. The stores serve over 4.5 million customers each week with over £1 billion per year. Its mission is to provide up-to-the-minute heath and beauty products.

Superdrug has over 10,000 products in its stores; it supplies vitamins, toiletries, drinks and snacks, photographic film accessories, newspapers, magazines and household accessories. Superdrug’s own brand manufactures do not commission animal testing on any own brands, products or ingredients, although they no longer guarantee that these ingredients have not been tested on animals previously.