Pharmacy driven: McPherson’s paving new retail focus for soon-to-be acquired Blackmores’ TCM business

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McPherson's has a strong distribution network in pharmacies for its existing beauty products, and will be tapping into the channel for brands under Global Therapeutics. ©Getty Images (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

McPherson’s will be focusing on the pharmacy distribution network for the TCM and oriental botanical brands that it will be acquiring from Blackmores.

Fusion Health and Oriental Botanicals, the two brands under Global Therapeutics which Blackmores will be selling off, will mark the start of McPherson’s venture into the health and wellness segment.

At present, majority of the McPherson’s business is in the beauty, skincare, and cosmetics categories, owning brands such as A’Kin and Dr LeWinn’s.

Speaking to NutraIngredients-Asia, Laurence McAllister, managing director and CEO, said the company would focus on expanding the distribution of Fusion Health in health food stores and driving the growth of Oriental Botanicals in pharmacies, where the company already enjoyed a good presence for its beauty products.

With the strong distribution network, he believes that this will provide a good foundation for the firm to tap into the lucrative health supplement industry.

“It [supplement industry] is very large, it gets strong margins, its sustainable, I don't think people will be moving away from vanity and health in the future.

“So, it’s a good space for us and we have got good capability in this space, one of it was through the pharmacies, where we have got massive presence,” he said.

The CEO of Blackmores previously said that the health foods channels, which the two brands are predominantly sold in, were declining in market size, which was also a reason for selling away the business.

The acquisition is expected to complete on Nov 30 and McPherson’s has embarked on an AUD$36.5m (US$25.6m) capital drive to fund the acquisition and future growth initiatives.

Post-acquisition, the company is expecting from Global Therapeutics a normalised FY2020 Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT) of AUD$3.7m (US$2.6m) and to grow it further to AUD$4.5m (US$3.1m) in FY2021.

Upcoming plans

Sleep, immunity, clean-label, and vegan are some of the key areas that McPherson’s hopes to focus on for the two new brands.

This is based on the observation that more R&D and new products are using botanicals to tackle the above concerns, said David Fielding, head of communications.

“As we look forward, you will see an interesting space especially with herbals and that there is quite a large growth in the area around sleep.

“Immunity is already a very strong within the portfolio as well, it has got a large portion of SKUs aimed at that. Given what's happening with COVID-19, I think we will all agree that it is something that wouldn’t go away anytime soon,” he said.

Aside from expanding the product offerings, bringing the brands overseas is also part of the plan, with New Zealand cited as the first destination.

Efforts on updating the product labelling to meet the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s new requirements is also underway, with about five out of the 240 product SKUs left to work on.

The company has also been growing its R&D team, expanding from a team of about three in 2016 to 13 today.

“We already put in extra headcount into the ongoing P&L (profit and loss) of the business with regard to regulatory and compliance and quality, because this is a different business.

More than anything, we need to settle down and integrate it [Global Therapeutics] into our company,” McAllister said.