Celltrion完成Gifrer整合并拟借法国药房网络扩展欧洲直销

Celltrion (068270.KS) has completed the integration of Gifrer, the French healthcare company it acquired in May, and is moving to expand its European sales channels through the roughly 9,000 pharmacies in Gifrer's network. The strategy adds pharmacy sales channels to Celltrion's existing hospital-centered direct sales of biopharmaceuticals, aiming to deepen market penetration led by subcutaneous (SC) formulations.
Celltrion said on the 18th that it had finished aligning organizational cooperation, staffing and product-specific sales strategies following the Gifrer acquisition. Seo Jung-jin, chairman of Celltrion Group, recently visited the company's French subsidiary and Gifrer to review the operation of the pharmacy sales network, the product portfolio and plans to link sales between the two companies.
Gifrer has a network of about 9,000 pharmacies and a supply chain covering some 800 hospitals across France, and sells roughly 140 products including over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, pharmacy-dispensed medicines (DM) and health functional foods. Celltrion plans to expand its points of sale by combining its French subsidiary's existing capability for hospital- and clinician-focused direct sales of biopharmaceuticals with Gifrer's pharmacy network.
In particular, the company intends to make greater use of pharmacy channels for SC formulations, which patients administer themselves. In line with a trend in France toward broader pharmacy substitution for biopharmaceuticals, Celltrion is preparing pharmacy-level direct sales of its bone-disease treatments Stoboclo and Osenvelt, and plans to add more biosimilar products depending on future changes in the relevant regulations.
Celltrion is also pursuing an expansion of its sales portfolio to include generics — copies of synthetic drugs — and healthcare products. The plan is to raise the utility of the pharmacy sales network by reviewing the in-licensing and local launch of other companies' biosimilars, generics and healthcare products that do not directly compete with Celltrion's own products. Jipiderm, a dermo-cosmetic brand from Celltrion Skin Cure, is also set to debut in France's pharmacy distribution market early next year.
After verifying the profitability of the combined sales model with Gifrer in France, Celltrion plans to expand the business into other European countries in stages, taking into account each country's drug distribution structure and its biosimilar substitution rules.
"We will focus on producing tangible results by combining Gifrer's pharmacy network with Celltrion's product competitiveness," said Kim Dong-sik, head of Celltrion's global operations for the European region. "We will broaden the portfolio to include not only our own products but also non-competing products from other companies, and expand the model we have verified in France across all of Europe."