Procurement leveraged to expand leading pharmaceutical company

Source: Invest in Australia

South Africa’s leading pharmaceutical company, Aspen, announced it is to acquire Australia’s Sigma Pharmaceuticals Limited.

Aspen will leverage its world-class procurement, manufacturing and distribution capabilities to ensure that the expanded Aspen business delivers growing value in Australia.

The acquisition will see Aspen become the leading pharmaceutical company by volume of scripts generated in Australia.

Stephen Saad, Aspen's group CE, said the acquisition enables the Group to accelerate growth in its Australian business and also to stimulate expansion plans into the broader Asia Pacific region. Saad reiterated that Aspen has already demonstrated its ability to supply high quality products at competitive prices across more than 100 worldwide territories.

In 2010 Aspen announced that it had reached a formal agreement to acquire Sigma’s pharmaceutical business on a debt-free basis for a cash consideration of AU$900 million. The transaction was however subject to a number of condition precedents which have now been fulfilled.

Aspen Australia, established in May 2001, markets and distributes pharmaceutical and consumer products. Aspen Australia has succeeded in delivering double-digit growth since inception as a greenfields operation in 2001, and recorded revenue of approximately AU$180 million in the year ended 30 June 2010.

The Sigma acquisition creates the extension of Aspen’s existing branded products business in Australia with the addition of Sigma’s branded, generics and OTC portfolios and serves as an established point of entry into the Australian generics and OTC sectors for the introduction of Aspen`s pipeline of generic and OTC products.

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