According to the data released by the State Food and Drug Administration, as of the third quarter of 2021, the retail chain rate of drugs has risen to 57.
1%.
The industry believes that the increase in the chain rate means that the proportion of chain stores in the national pharmacies has increased, which will be a major challenge for single pharmacies, or accelerate the opening of the knockout round
for single pharmacies.
It is understood that although the number of single pharmacies is growing, and even the proportion of chains in some provinces is higher than that of chains, the fate of "weakening" is inevitable
due to the dual impact of policy and market environment.
This is mainly because in recent years, whether it is GSP certification, "two-invoice system", generic drug consistency evaluation, etc.
, or pharmacy flight inspection, crackdown on insurance fraud, drug collection, etc.
, are objectively conducive to the development of chains; In addition, local drug regulatory departments have also continuously introduced policies to encourage chains to do large-scale, such as lowering the "threshold" for cross-regional operations and encouraging the "six unifications" to join
.
For example, in the Opinions on Supporting the Development of Pharmaceutical Retail Chain Enterprises issued by the Hebei Provincial Food and Drug Administration, it for the first time liberalized the franchise of the drug retail chain, and expressed its support for the integration of other drug retail chain enterprises or single pharmacies in the form of mergers, reorganizations, and franchises
.
Since May 1, the official implementation of the "Guangdong Provincial Drug Retail Chain Operation Supervision and Administration Measures" has also clarified
the behavior and method of chain operation.
It is worth mentioning that in addition to the strong support of independent pharmacies to join the chain enterprises, in recent years, large chains have also sent out a signal
to vigorously develop franchise business.
At present, large chains such as the people, Dashenglin, Yangtianhe and other large chains have successively launched "new policies" to attract franchisees, covering all aspects
of operation, capital, manpower, and technology.
In the first half of this year, listed chains have made remarkable achievements in the expansion of franchise stores, such as 609 new people, 441 new ginseng forests, and 164 new Yifeng
stores.
Although there are advantages such as labor and relatively low rent of individual pharmacies, with the continuous expansion and sinking of chain pharmacies, it is inevitable
that single pharmacies with insufficient strength will be accelerated and eliminated.
The industry believes that the current dispute over the scale of chain pharmacies is actually a dispute over
cost control.
Enhancing the user coverage capabilities of chain pharmacies can further reduce costs and expand sales
.
In today's retail pharmacy market in China, "staking land" has become the main way to
compete.
Obviously, in this way of competition, the individual pharmacy does not have an advantage
.
It is worth noting that in addition to the chain pharmacies are constantly squeezing the living space of single pharmacies, the policy has also begun to boost the retail
chain rate.
At the end of October last year, the Ministry of Commerce issued the Guiding Opinions
on Promoting the High-quality Development of the Pharmaceutical Circulation Industry during the 14th Five-Year Plan Period.
Among them, according to the high-quality development construction goal of "retail chain rate of nearly 70%" in 2025, with 606,500 pharmacies as the base, the number of stores of single pharmacies will be reduced to about 180,000 in the next three years, compared with about 250,000 now, or a sharp decrease of about 70,000
.
In general, in the context of policy efforts and increasing competition in the industry, the gradual withdrawal of single pharmacies from the market is expected by all parties, which is the inevitable result
of promoting industrial concentration.
In the future, the combination of chain and monomer pharmacies may be the outcome
of most monomer pharmacies.
