The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7458 p761
30 June 2007

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

  Acrobat Reader

News summary

Alliance Boots leaves European wholesalers' association

Alliance Boots has withdrawn from the European Association of Pharmaceutical Full-line Wholesalers (GIRP) because of differences of “outlook and approach” relating to direct-to-pharmacy distribution arrangements in the UK (PJ, 2 December 2006, p658).

Ornella Barra, wholesale and commercial affairs director of Alliance Boots, has subsequently resigned from GIRP’s executive committee. She commented: “Pharmaceutical manufacturers are asking for new and innovative services from full-line wholesalers and we have tried to meet their demands. Unfortunately GIRP has been unable and unwilling to embrace these changes.”

GIRP president René Jenny commented on the changes to medicines distribution at a Pharmaceutical Forum meeting in Brussels this week: “We [GIRP] are not opposed to change, however we suggest less revolutionary approaches which do not endanger the continuous supply of all medicines.”

Alliance Boots’s wholesaler, UniChem, withdrew from the British Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers earlier this year (PJ, 14 April, p417).