// LloydsPharmacy is selling a “significant number” of its standalone store across the UK amid government funding concerns
// The group is understood to have contacted pharmacy sales specialists to handle to offloading of its store estate
LloydsPharmacy is understood to be offloading a “significant number” of its standalone stores amid concerns over government funding for the industry, with several branches sold in recent weeks.
Pharmacy Network News reported Hutchings Consultants, which specialises in pharmacy sales, had informed prospective buyers in an email of a “divestment campaign by a multiple operator to include a significant number of new branches” across England, Wales and Scotland.
The stores are said to be sold under three projects – Project Clover, Project Mulberry and Project Sapphire – with each managing a different geographical region in the UK.
Hutchings Consultants declined to comment to Retail Gazette.
It has emerged that some LloydsPharamcy branches have been offloaded in recent months with two stores in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, sold to independent chain Porter Pharmacy earlier this month, while one of the group’s stores located in Chingford, North London, was sold to Rosewood Pharmacy late last year.
A spokesman for LloydsPharmacy declined to give details on the sales process but told Retail Gazette: “LloydsPharmacy regularly reviews its pharmacy estate to ensure it is operating sustainably and any decision to sell stores is taken in the interests of patients, colleagues and the business.”
“At all times, patient safety remains our top priority ensuring that our customers and patients are always able to access vital prescriptions, health advice, products and services.”
The news comes as the pharmacy retailer revealed it would close all of its 237 outlets inside Sainsbury’s over the course of the year in response to what it termed “changing market conditions”.
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It is understood that the LloydsPharamacy is also cutting roles.
One source told Retail Gazette that several regional managers had been made redundant and the remaining regional managers have been told to take on more stores.
The source added that staff at several shops had been informed by building landlords that their lease was coming to an end and LloydsPharmacy had not renewed.
LloydsPharmacy’s moves come as concerns have been raised over funding for the pharmacy industry.
In the wake of Lloyds’ announcement that it was closing branches in Sainsbury’s, rival Rowlands Pharmacy-owner, Phoenix UK deputy managing director Nigel Swift, told Chemist+Druggist that it was “clearest possible sign of the dire situation facing community pharmacy in England as a result of insufficient government funding”.
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