Every community pharmacy in the UK will soon be serviced by AAH, as a result of the wholesaler's first exclusive distribution deal, with manufacturer Ferring Pharmaceuticals.  

From January 2014, AAH will be the sole supplier of all Ferring products, including incontinence treatment Desmomelt, colitis treatment Pentasa and laxative Picolax. The deal means every community pharmacy in the UK, including Boots branches, will be serviced by AAH as well as Alliance Healthcare, an AAH spokesperson told C+D last week (October 16).  

Cormac Tobin, managing director of AAH parent company Celesio UK, said the company was delighted with the deal and would continue to work with manufacturers and pharmacists to provide "innovative supply solutions".

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	"AAH has provided Ferring with an emergency supply service for several years, which has proven to us that they can reach every dispensing point in the UK," said Ferring general manager Steve Howson.

Aniruddh Patel, owner of Savages Pharmacy in Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, said pharmacists had become used to wholesalers signing exclusive distribution deals, because many manufacturers had already signed similar agreements with Alliance.  

"You could moan and complain but if you don't do it you're going to lose a patient prescription. It's just another layer of paperwork," he told C+D.  

In 2006, Alliance signed an exclusive distribution deal with Pfizer, the first of its kind. The deal led to an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) into exclusive medicines distribution deals, which concluded that such arrangements could create "longer-term competition concerns" if they became widespread.  

Since then, Alliance has signed similar deals with other manufacturers in the UK, including Novo Nordisk and Lundbeck.  

In May 2011, the OFT told C+D it had "no plans" to look at further exclusive medicines distribution deals, despite recognising that such deals had been established.