Average PI Discount Available to Pharmacies in the Run Up to Brexit
The graph is based on the market pricing data collected by WaveData over the last couple of years.
It shows the decline in the profits pharmacies could make on the parallel imports they bought in the run-up to Brexit. It demonstrates a profitability decline from around 15% to 13.5%. Which, while not a large drop, could harm pharmacies and damage their ability to continue operations.
The number of wholesaler price list offers for parallel imports was about 14,000 per month at the beginning of 2019, fell to a low of 8,000 in September 2019, but recovered to 17,000 in November 2020. The recovery in late 2020 suggests that the UK EU deal will stimulate importers to reengage with exporters in Europe and get back to the 25,000 offers per month we saw in March 2018.
The discounts for individual parallel imported products was hugely variable, which means that some products made pharmacies small fortunes, whereas others lost them money.