Manufacturers have hit out at exporting pharmacies, claiming some businesses are ordering so many packs of medicines that they are using up wholesalers' entire stocks and leaving other pharmacies short.

"One very small chain of UK pharmacies placed an individual medicines order with one of our member companies that equated to 5,370 per cent of the entire UK market," an Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) spokesperson told C+D.

And one manufacturer had faced demand "equivalent to 26 years' worth of UK supply for one of its products in just five months", the association also revealed earlier this year. "If a manufacturer was obliged to try and fulfil the order they would be left with no stock available for other UK pharmacists," the spokesperson said.

Manufacturers could publish lists of pharmacy medicines usage to show exporters just how high the volumes they used were

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Managing exporting pharmacies and stock was an "impossible task" agreed an analyst at a manufacturer, who contacted C+D but asked to remain anonymous. In some cases pharmacies had ordered the maximum amount of stock from all wholesalers they had accounts with, they said. "Sometimes these appear as ‘smash and grab' cases, where a pharmacy inexplicably manages to clear out a wholesaler of its entire stock of a product."

The analyst called quotas "absolutely necessary" to manage stocks and stressed simply putting more medicine into the UK market would not resolve the problems. "I can guarantee that if we doubled the production of some of our exported lines we still wouldn't satisfy exporters' demand," they said.

And they suggested manufacturers could publish lists of average pharmacy medicine usage to show those exporting just how high the volumes they used were. "It's so frustrating getting a call from a pharmacy begging for one or two packs when I know the chap down the road got his hands on 100," they said.

The warnings come amid ongoing controversy over the export of medicines. C+D readers appear split on the issue – in the C+D Stocks Survey 2011, several pharmacists said they thought people with export licences should be closely monitored; but in a web poll, almost two-thirds thought pharmacists should be allowed to export. And the manufacturers' comments have been contended by some pharmacists, who say contractors are being forced into exporting simply to survive.

One group claiming to represent almost 100 pharmacy businesses contacted C+D to defend their right to export. The group, called the British Independent Pharmacy and Wholesale Association (BIPWA), claimed direct-to-pharmacy distribution models and "arbitrary" quotas were damaging the supply chain and said pharmacists should be able to export medicines.

"How can we not condone exporting to increase pharmaceutical competition, decrease monopolisation of the market by manufacturers and mean people from all over Europe can get their drugs cheaper?" they asked. The group also hit out at official medicines shortages lists, arguing: "There is no documented methodology for classifying how a product is defined as being in short supply."

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