The pharmacy group Multipharma is taking over the 88 pharmacies of healthcare retailer Goed, part of the Christian Mutuality (CM). Multipharma announced this on Monday evening. The Multipharma network becomes a third larger in one fell swoop. The 436 employees of the Goed pharmacies and the pharmacy wholesaler will continue to work at Multipharma.
Goed wants to concentrate on its home care offering, including 36 home care stores. In this context, the Goed hearing centers were already taken over by Audika in the summer of 2023, and a buyer has now also been found for the pharmacy activities.
There were several candidates – according to the business newspaper The time for example also the Colruyt group -, but in the end it became the Multipharma cooperative. Its network of pharmacies will expand from 243 to 331.
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Goed’s pharmacy activities generated a turnover of 169 million euros and an operating profit of 3.3 million euros in 2023. The 436 employees of the Goed pharmacies and the pharmacy wholesaler, which also goes to Multipharma, will continue to work, Multipharma says in a press release. Nothing will change for patients and customers either.
“The two networks are largely complementary: Multipharma has a greater presence in Brussels and Wallonia, and Goed more in Flanders,” says Geert Reyniers, CEO of Multipharma. The intention is for the name ‘Good’ to disappear from pharmacies before the end of the year and be replaced by Multipharma.
But for now, the pharmacies will continue to operate independently, pending the completion of the acquisition. Multipharma will submit a takeover file to the competition authority. There is no communication about the takeover amount.
300 jobs disappear
Goed will invest the proceeds from the sale of the pharmacy branch in the further rollout of the reorganization and the strengthening of its home care offering, “where the demand for care services and aids for quality living at home is growing strongly year after year”. As part of the reorganization, 300 jobs will disappear at the healthcare retailer.
“The operation of the pharmacies has now moved further away from the core mission that we see for Goed and on which we want to fully focus,” says Jan Kuyps, CEO of Goed. That is why a buyer was sought. “With Goed, we focus entirely on selling, renting and providing medical devices for quality home care from the transfer of the pharmacies.”
The IMV department is not included in the takeover. This is the department that offers individual dosages of medicines per distribution round on behalf of residential care centers, among others. “For the sake of consistency with other activities of Goed to the same customers, Goed is looking at the strategic options for IMV separately from the acquisition of the pharmacy branch,” stated a press release.
Tags: Multipharma takes pharmacies ailing Goed
