New Clicks Holdings (NCL), the health, beauty and soon-to-be pharmacy retailer, says it hopes to begin adding modern new dispensaries to its stores across South Africa during its 2004 financial year, which begins in August.
Addressing investment analysts at a presentation in Cape Town on Friday, New Clicks group leader Trevor Honneysett said the company hoped to convert about 40 of its stores to a new format including drug dispensaries in the first year as part of a R100-million, three-to-four-year conversion plan for most of its 267 Clicks health and beauty stores, as well as re-branding its 81 (indirectly owned) Link and LinkMax pharmacies as Clicks stores.
However, he cautioned, actual timing of the conversions was very much dependent on the time it took for the government to approve the transfer of the existing pharmacy licences and applications for new licences. Eventually, the group aims to have a total of 343 Clicks stores with pharmacies in operation, most owned directly.
The cost of the conversion would range between R140 000 to R250 000 per store (excluding IT costs), depending on the size, with the very first new-look store ready by August this year, Honneysett said.
The group plans to offer four different Clicks store formats, all designed by an Australian design group. The first will be a very large store comprising all of the health, beauty, homeware and gifts the Click’s brand is known for, with a focus on “indulging the South African woman”, plus medicines and a pharmacy dispensary, while the second will be a smaller version of the first.
The third format excludes some home offerings such as pots and pans, but provides for a greater emphasis on the pharmacy and pharmacist, with convenience and longer trading hours in order to cater to the after-hours needs of pharmacy clients. The fourth format is a smaller version of this.
New Clicks expects actual application forms for new pharmacy licenses and the transfer of existing ones to be published in the Government Gazette next Friday, May 23. With the new pharmacy regulations barely off the press, however, many uncertainties regarding their actual implementation remain.
During Friday’s presentation, Lawrence Helman of legal firm Sonnenberg, Hoffmann, Galombik told analysts the new legislation, as he read it, provided for a “relatively straightforward” transfer of existing licences from current pharmacists to New Clicks, making for a good chance of a relatively speedy approval process.
There were still questions surrounding the distances licences could be moved, however, given that much importance was being placed on the community impact of the licences.
For a new licence application, the approval process looked to be much more substantive, Helman said. This was because certain conditions had to be fulfilled (apart from the obvious proof that one complies with the standards of good pharmacy practice) such as: the benefit to community members; the nature and extent of the service to be provided; the population to be serviced; the relationship between proposed services and existing ones; whether it would be servicing persons outside the “service area”; and the special needs of the community.
The government now sees corporate ownership in the pharmacy industry- previously prohibited-as a way of bringing costs down and making health products more accessible to rural and underserviced areas of the country.”
“An essential aspect of the new regulations is to make affordable healthcare more accessible to a broader range of communities, and we are committed to working with government to help make this a reality,” Honneysett added. “Clicks will in future operate wholly-owned and joint venture stores, as well as continuing to support franchise operations, which will allow the group to facilitate meaningful black economic empowerment at a store level, and presents a real opportunity for retailers and entrepreneurs in disadvantaged areas.” – I-Net Bridge