The South African business provides a basket of high quality, affordable branded, generic, OTC, consumer and nutritional products. These products are supplied to pharmacies, retail pharmacy chains, hospitals, clinics, prescribing specialists, dispensing general practitioners, managed healthcare funders and retail stores across the private and public sectors, as well as to selected export markets. APIs are sold into South Africa and to export territories.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN PHARMACEUTICAL MARKET CONTINUES TO GROW

The South African pharmaceutical business recorded excellent growth in revenue under challenging economic and operating market conditions. The value of the total South African private pharmaceutical market has grown by 15% during the 2009 year and Aspen has grown ahead of the market at 20%.

Aspen remains the leading supplier of medicines domestically, having retained its position as the number one generics pharmaceutical company in South Africa. Aspen holds 13% share and a 34% share of the total private pharmaceutical and generic sectors respectively. Aspen also continues to be a leading supplier of products to the State tender programmes, including the OSD tender, oral contraceptive tender and the ARV tender. These accomplishments have been retained in an increasingly competitive market.

ImpactRx, an independent company which evaluates and reports on the impact of pharmaceutical promotion on scripted products, indicates that one in five script lines dispensed by South African pharmacists in the past two years are for an Aspen product, placing Aspen in first position with a script line share of 21%. In the public sector, it is estimated that Aspen supplies one in every four tablets to the State tender programme and was awarded almost 75% of the State's ARV volumes.

Public sector tenders are scheduled to be awarded again in the next year and Aspen expects to remain competitive in these tenders.

Organic volume growth and the success of recent product launches such as Truvada, Viread, Vectoryl and Aspen Efavirenz resulted in sustained growth. The DoH granted a SEP increase of 13,2% in February 2009 which offered some relief from the adverse effects of the increased cost of goods caused by the weakening of the currency in the first half of the financial year and domestic inflation running into double digits. Margins improved in the last quarter as the benefits of the increase in the SEP worked through to the market.

Aspen’s diverse portfolio of products includes more than 2 000 stock-keeping units and offers a convenient, one-stop-shop to valued customers. Aspen ’s range of chronic medicines represent more than 50% of the revenue from the pharmaceutical division, indicating a high level of trust in the brand by customers.

Senior Executives:

Chief Executive Officer: South Africa
(Appointed 2009).

Morné Geyser
Head: South African Operations
(Appointed 1995).

Stavros Nicoloau
StrategicTradeDevelopment Senior Executive
(Appointed 1994).

Vincent Alexander
National Human Resources Executive
(Appointed 2007).