Invest KOREA

BRINGING HEALTH TO THE COMMUNITY

Leading healthcare services provider Zuellig Pharma works to get patients in Korea what they need

Zuellig Pharma Korea is in the business of connecting the dots.

That’s why the staff here spends a lot of time thinking about what their business continuity plan would be in the event of a crisis or disaster, when circumstances make the dots hard to connect. During the Fukushima nuclear disaster after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the experts at Zuellig Pharma Korea considered how they would get people the medicines and services they need if there were a radioactive cloud over Korea.

During the outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Korea last year, the company did what they could to make sure patients got not only the drugs they needed, but also information, printing 60,000 leaflets with data about MERS from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and distributing them at pharmacies nationwide, especially those in remote areas, to combat the problem of misinformation and lack of information.

“We want to bring health to the community,” said Christophe Piganiol, President of Zuellig Pharma Korea. “So what it means is, not only do we distribute products. What is it we can do to better the health outcome for patients? That’s the big vision.”

A leading healthcare services provider in Asia with operations in 14 countries, the Singapore-based Zuellig Pharma offers services related to the distribution of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and clinical trial materials, sales and marketing outsourcing, patient-centered programs, payor solutions and other retail pharmacy services.

Started in 1922 by a Swiss doctor who emigrated to the Philippines, Zuellig Pharma today is exclusively in the Asia-Pacific region and serves more than 350,000 doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and clinics.

The company entered the Korean market in 1997 when a consortium of local and multinational partner companies here asked Zuellig Pharma to help them consolidate business, improve standards for distribution and work together to address market needs. Zuellig Pharma considered Korea an attractive market with a high development rate and growth potential. They opened their doors in Seoul and started providing companies with quality service that focused on cold chain and pharmaceutical management. Today, Zuellig Pharma Korea distributes 25 percent of Korea’s drugs and has developed a number of new services that go beyond distribution.

“For some of these services, Korea has been the incubator and we have been at the source of many best practices in the group,” said Piganiol.

These include high standards in warehousing and distribution services, a system of serializing and tracking over 120 million packs of medicine Zuellig Pharma Korea handles a year, a product affordability program based on the socioeconomic background of patients and a human resources practice in which employees are evaluated and guided in terms of career development via panel reviews.

“We have a more stable population in terms of our employees than some of the other countries because the Korean work structure is a little bit more stable,” said Piganiol, of why Korea was the first country within the Zuellig Pharma group to try this human resources practice.

Taking advantage of Korea’s high-tech environment, the company has also incubated its e-commerce service in Korea, creating not only transactional platforms, but online education programs and orderby-web phone apps for pharmacies. These services will be offered at Zuellig Pharma’s other locations in the near future.

With 12 offices in Korea – six sales offices and six warehouses – the company’s 250-person local operation continues to grow. In 2014, Zuellig Pharma Korea added a new entity called the Specialty Solutions Korea that comprises 45 people and includes both marketing and patient care segments.

Furthermore, a major achievement in 2015 was Zuellig Pharma’s exclusive licensing agreement with Korea’s Boryung Pharmaceutical, to launch and market an anti-hypertensive drug called Kanarb in 13 Southeast Asian countries.

“What you have potential for is some smart innovations coming out of Korea to be able to be exported,” said Piganiol.

Two factors will significantly affect the extent to which Zuellig Pharma Korea partners with exporting local companies: Korea’s many free trade agreements, including those with the United States and European Union, and the Korean government’s Pharma 2020 Vision to develop Korea’s pharmaceutical industry as one of the world’s best through, among other measures, supporting the overseas expansion of local pharmaceutical companies.

Piganiol names top standards and excellent human resources as other reasons Korea is an important market for Zuellig Pharma.

“The standards of work, technology, the level of development is high, so you can help use those standards to create new best practices,” he said.

As for the people, the president cites their quality, work ethic and training to be especially impressive, saying, “The ability to execute and to execute fast is amazing in Korea.”

By Chang Young
(Former) Executive Consultant / Invest Korea