Phoenix UK and Peak Pharmacy invest millions in hub-and-spoke models
Rowlands’ parent company and 150-branch chain Peak Pharmacy have both announced plans to open hubs next year, both backed by multi-million-pound investments.
Peak Pharmacy – which has an online pharmacy and branches across Cheshire and Oxfordshire – is investing more than £20 million into its new hub and headquarters in Derbyshire, it announced yesterday (July 4).
Meanwhile, Phoenix UK has allocated more than £13m to build a new state-of-the-art distribution hub in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in response to rising customer demand, it announced today (July 5).
Read more: Jhoots Pharmacy secures over £8m to implement hub-and-spoke model
Both companies have said their hubs will focus on sustainability.
Peak Pharmacy has promised “electric charge points for colleague and business vehicles, major tree-planting and a bat box”.
Meanwhile, Phoenix UK will install solar panels on the hub’s roof and its car park is expected to offer 46 electric vehicle charging bays.
However, the two hubs will have some operational differences.
Peak Pharmacy: Serving community pharmacies
The Peak Pharmacy hub – expected to open in April next year – will serve the chain’s 150 branches, but it could also deliver assembled medicines directly to patients’ homes, it suggested.
The government has proposed making legislative changes across the UK to allow the operation of hub-and-spoke dispensing across different legal entities and sets out two proposed models for this (see below).
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First model: Patient presents prescription to the spoke pharmacy. The pharmacy sends it to the hub, which prepares and assembles the medicines. These are sent back to the spoke, which supplies them to the patient. Second model: Same as above but the hub sends the medicines directly to the patient’s home rather than to the retail pharmacy.” |
Should the law change, Peak Pharmacy could open its hub to other independent pharmacies that “don’t have the resources to develop their own centralised service”, it added.
Its hub “will use state-of-the-art robots and automated systems to support staff handling over 400,000 medicines and other prescribed items every month – that’s 20,000 a day, more than 40 every minute”, the pharmacy group claimed.
A render of the future Peak Pharmacy hub
The decision to invest in the hub is “in response to caps in government funding”, Peak Pharmacy said, “which mean that pharmacy businesses are having to be more efficient in how they handle prescriptions”.
The venture will see the chain replace five smaller sites in Derbyshire. C+D has asked the company to clarify how staff will be affected by these closures, but the group said: “It’s too early to say.”
Phoenix UK’s hub to serve hospitals and dispensing doctors too
Meanwhile, Phoenix UK’s hub – which the company also plans to open next year – will service hospitals, community pharmacies and dispensing doctors across the north east of England and Yorkshire, the group said.
Groundwork on the hub has already begun and the site was officially open on June 30.
In the middle, third from the left: Steve Anderson at the official opening of the site
Phoenix group managing director Steve Anderson said: “Over the last few years, we have seen an outstanding growth in customer demand for our core services outpacing the market.
Read more: PSNC: ‘Virtually no financial efficiencies’ in DH's hub-and-spoke proposals
“Wakefield is a prime example of how we are committed to investing in the future by expanding our UK-wide operational capabilities to offer all our customers across the country the best possible service they need, want and deserve.”
In 2019, Phoenix UK unveiled its new hub-and-spoke dispensing facility, MediPAC.
In a recent interview with C+D, Rowlands managing director Nigel Swift revealed that all 431 branches now use the solution. He said that, should the legislation be updated, the company’s dispensing technology would become available to all Numark members.
