Age of Closing

For more than a year now, most significant trend in Russian pharmaceutical retail are active consolidation processes. By the end of Q1-Q3 of 2014, the market hit its new maximum – the total share of the Top-15 chains came close to the psychological threshold of 25%. This is the first time in Russian history, when pharm retail hits this level of concentration. Even in the pre-crisis 2007, top-15 had only 23% of the market. It is significant that, in 2007 top-1 chain had nearly 6% of market share, which was twice more than the nearest competitor’s share. Since then, the market became much more even, and today’s leaders fight over tenth parts of percent.

In addition, Russian pharmaceutical retail over the last year revealed another trend, which could play for the future of industry, even more important role than consolidation processes dynamics. The current level of communication between vendors and retail can achieve maximum performance only within limited local markets. With the understanding of this fact, the players came up with geographical expansion principles revision, which, in its turn, led to large pharmacy chain units resale in number of Russian regions.