Supermarkets eye drug profits

Prescription drugs such as the contraceptive pill, Prozac and Viagra could soon be widely available from supermarkets as they push for a slice of the lucrative pharmaceutical industry.

A trial pharmacy opened in a central Auckland supermarket late last year, and there are signs more could soon follow - a move the Pharmacy Guild believes could cause some headaches for the traditional corner chemist.

Following partial deregulation of the pharmaceutical industry, which came into effect last September, supermarkets can now apply for a licence for an in-store pharmacy.

Fifty-one per cent of the business must be retained by a pharmacist.

Progressive Enterprises, owned by Australia's largest grocer, Woolworths, operates 148 stores in New Zealand under the Countdown, Foodtown and Woolworths banners. It is coy about its future plans, but says its central Auckland pharmacy has been a big success. Said Progressive managing director Richard Umbers: "Obviously we do have plans but we don't want the competition to know about them."

But Life Pharmacy, one of New Zealand's largest pharmacy chains, said it was likely that in time New Zealand would follow the United Kingdom where 20 per cent of all pharmacies were located in supermarkets.

Chief executive Tim Roper said of the 897 pharmacies in New Zealand, it would be the smaller community businesses that would be hardest hit when supermarkets entered the pharmacy market with force.

The competition from supermarkets would mean "a fine line between existing and not existing".

"There are a lot of pharmacists around 50 to 60 years of age looking towards retirement who do not want to reinvest profits in their stores."

The Pharmacy Guild is now calling for New Zealanders to support their community pharmacists, saying: "If you don't, we will lose them".

"And if that happens then patients will be the outright losers," said chief executive Murray Burns.

Mr Burns said owning a pharmacy was a privilege which carried substantial obligations and overseas studies had shown supermarkets did not take these as seriously as suburban pharmacists.

"In some countries where a mass of pharmacies have opened in supermarkets following deregulation, the focus has been on shifting products rather than healthcare of patients," he said.

"While a supermarket pharmacy may be convenient, I really can't see them monitoring the methadone or needle-exchange programmes."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY