Merck Acquires Direct Marketer of Vitamins, Minerals and Supplements
Source: http://www.chemie.de/news/e/27832/
21 August 2003
Merck KGaA announced that Merck CHC Holding, its wholly owned Consumer Health Care business, has acquired Peter Black Direct Marketing Ltd., a U.K.-based direct marketer of vitamins, minerals and supplements, in order to expand and reinforce Merck's market share in Great Britain.
Peter Black Direct Marketing, located in Tunbridge Wells in Southeastern England, has two businesses - Nature's Best, which sells directly to consumers, and Lamberts, which sells to practitioners and nutritionists. The 20-year-old company employs a total of 55 people.
Merck CHC Holding is already the leader in the U.K. vitamins and minerals market with its well-known line of Seven Seas products, which are sold through retail outlets. Because of their different sales strategies, Seven Seas Ltd. and the new acquisition will remain separate operations. Peter Black Direct Marketing will be renamed Lamberts Healthcare Ltd.
"Peter Black Direct Marketing is a leader in the growing direct-to-consumer vitamins and supplements market in the U.K. and gives Merck KGaA the opportunity to expand its presence in the strategically important VMS market," said Volker Keidtel, Head of Merck KGaA's Consumer Health Care division.
The total U.K. vitamins, minerals and supplements market, including direct-to-customer sales, amounts to an estimated GBP 430 million (EUR 617 million) annually.
Comments
your voice counts
27 August 2014 at 8:21 pm
Shame! Drug companies have spent years and considerable effort to criticize all things natural such as vitamins and minerals and now they realise the monetary value of this market they are buying up established manufacturers and retail chains of health food and supplement companies.
Holland and Barrett have also gone to "pharma".
Frankly I think this should be of concern as eventually drug companies may well own and thus have control over natural supplements and medicines and can then dictate to the public as to the potencies and availability of these.
Freedoms of choice will undoubtedly be eroded in the process.
20 January 2015 at 11:13 am
There are a few points, which a merger of an alternative medicine provider with a pharmaceutical company, flags up.
Those that sell vitamins and herbs have had a very bad time for many years (probably since 2001) because of EU directives (2004) and demands coming into force, a created authorization to market herbal medicines, within the EU if manufacturers get the certificate and go ahead. Many herbal products, have been removed from Health stores, manufacture and sale over the years, because they have not got an EU certification or been tested in a laboratory, (as the scientific, medical model of health requires). Because the EU demands that alternative medicine is now manufactured under `good marketing practice` (GMP)to ensure quality and safety, mergers of herbs and vitamins and a laboratory, which can test, may be a good move, because it can `prove` to the EU goods are offered under `good marketing practice`. Therefore, if you can get the herbs etc, into a lab, test, research and provide evidence, then get the product certified, a company can, under created regulations, go on to sell the product.It could be a good marketing move, under the boundaries in which companies find themselves these days.
Also there is big business in herbs and vitamins, as people`s awareness is raised about iatrogenesis, the serious contra indications, chemically produced, GP prescribed drugs carry. May be a realization of vitamin and herb sales, will swell the coffers of pharmaceutical companies, was apparent.
Yes,there are dangers and concerns about drug companies owning and controlling natural supplements.If a merger is used immorally and incorrectly, and for any other reason than being able to bring all herbs and vitamins to a population, under regulation, which would otherwise be disallowed under some created EU regulation, then choice could be manipulated.
03 April 2015 at 4:45 pm
kind of agree with anonymous here -these people have been slipping us all poison for years and dissing the old ways all in the name of a fast buck - all these takeovers of herbs and supplements sure looks like putting the fox in charge of the chickens -there should be plenty of independent testing if they expect to be trusted with the real stuff -but could there ever be such a thing?
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