The Swiss mail-order pharmacy Zur Rose supplies the whole of Germany and Austria from here
1.2 million packages with pharmaceuticals set off on a journey from Saxony-Anhalt every year
About 5,000 packages with pharmaceuticals set off on their journey day after day from Halle (Saale) to every corner of Germany and Austria. There are up to seven articles on average in every box, whose contents are put together with meticulous care and expertise. The merchandise is highly sensitive. As a logistics partner, Zur Rose Pharma organises the entire distribution of pharmaceuticals for the owner-managed mail-order pharmacy Zur Rose. For some of the merchandise, the logistics service provider has to guarantee, for example, a seamless cold chain through to delivery to the end customers, an unprecedented challenge.
Zur Rose Pharma has been working as a subsidiary of the Swiss Zur Rose Group in the south of Saxony-Anhalt since 2004. “Beforehand, we had evaluated just under half a dozen locations along the axis from Aachen via Düsseldorf to Leipzig,” says Managing Director Walter Hess. The entire surroundings were just right in Halle, the manager reports. For one, it was the available skilled workers who influenced the decision. Pharmaceutical specialists were traditionally trained in the region at the Martin Luther University, among others. The location on the outskirts of Halle’s city centre is also logistically ideal. It’s just under a 20-minute drive to the most important logistics partner, DHL’s parcel centre. 95 percent of the medicines that are ordered by midday and are in stock, already arrive at the customer’s the following working day. As a classic full-range provider, the mail-order pharmacy Zur Rose has access to roughly 400,000 articles, receiving supplies from several wholesalers on an hourly basis. 60 percent of customers today already use the Internet for orders, prescriptions traditionally arrive by post.
Walter Hess praises the support from the city on the Saale River and the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt. Both of them have pro-actively supported the 20 million euro investment. A service provision centre with an area of 6,000 square metres has been built. There is enough land for possible expansion. 96 permanent employees work in Halle today, roughly treble the number at the start in 2004. 13 apprentices are currently receiving training. Part-time staff and students help out during peak periods to complete the orders within a short time.
Zur Rose Pharma GmbH’s most important partner and customer is the mail-order pharmacy Zur Rose. Its employees monitor compliance with statutory requirements at all the crucial points in the shipping process and ultimately have “sovereignty in all pharmaceutical work steps,” explains Walter Hess. These include among other things the pharmaceutical approval of customer orders and dispensing control. Extensive checks are carried out in the background for every order for prescription and over-the-counter medicines. For example, the individual public health insurance companies’ different discount agreements from all over Germany have to be matched to the manufacturers for every prescription. In addition, it is extremely important that interactions with medically prescribed pharmaceuticals are checked by software support and reported to the doctor in case of conflict or that the patient is appropriately advised. More than 200,000 prescriptions are subjected to this check every year.
Nothing would work at Zur Rose without modern software solutions. Each of the more than nine million articles commissioned during the year is recorded paperlessly using a barcode including batch number. In the case of a medicine being recalled, recipients can therefore be informed in no time at all, guaranteeing safety throughout, explains Madlen Arnold, responsible for logistics.
The Swiss Zur Rose Group with head office in Frauenfeld is dedicated to the distribution of pharmaceuticals in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. According to its own information, it is the market leader in European mail-order pharmaceuticals. Zur Rose was founded as a pharmaceuticals wholesaler in 1993 and has also been operating as a mail-order pharmacy for private customers since 2001. Zur Rose and its subsidiaries DocMorris in Heerlen (NL) and Zur Rose Pharma in Halle are active in Germany and Austria. The Zur Rose Group employs more than 800 staff at different locations.
Numerous investments by Swiss companies in Saxony-Anhalt have been supported through the State-Region Joint Agreement “Improvement of Regional Economic Structure” (GRW). Measured by the investment volume, Switzerland is in third place behind the USA and Netherlands in an international comparison between 2000 and the end of March 2015. 23 funded investment projects with a total volume of EUR 371.7 million are on the books. As a result, at least 627 new permanent jobs have been created and 3,629 permanent jobs have been secured.
Exports by Saxony-Anhalt companies to Switzerland were roughly EUR 472 million in 2014, which means eleventh place compared to all export countries. Merchandise and services worth roughly EUR 378 million have been imported. In a ranking of import countries this means twelfth place.
Caption: About 5,000 packages with pharmaceuticals set off on their journey day after day from Halle (Saale) to every corner of Germany and Austria. There are up to seven articles on average in every box, whose contents are put together with meticulous care and expertise. The merchandise is highly sensitive. As a logistics partner, Zur Rose Pharma organises the entire distribution of pharmaceuticals for the owner-managed mail-order pharmacy Zur Rose. For some of the merchandise, the logistics service provider has to guarantee, for example, a seamless cold chain through to delivery to the end customers, an unprecedented challenge.
Zur Rose Pharma has been working as a subsidiary of the Swiss Zur Rose Group in the south of Saxony-Anhalt since 2004. “Beforehand, we had evaluated just under half a dozen locations along the axis from Aachen via Düsseldorf to Leipzig,” says Managing Director Walter Hess. The entire surroundings were just right in Halle, the manager reports. For one, it was the available skilled workers who influenced the decision. Pharmaceutical specialists were traditionally trained in the region at the Martin Luther University, among others. The location on the outskirts of Halle’s city centre is also logistically ideal. It’s just under a 20-minute drive to the most important logistics partner, DHL’s parcel centre. 95 percent of the medicines that are ordered by midday and are in stock, already arrive at the customer’s the following working day. As a classic full-range provider, the mail-order pharmacy Zur Rose has access to roughly 400,000 articles, receiving supplies from several wholesalers on an hourly basis. 60 percent of customers today already use the Internet for orders, prescriptions traditionally arrive by post.
Walter Hess praises the support from the city on the Saale River and the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt. Both of them have pro-actively supported the 20 million euro investment. A service provision centre with an area of 6,000 square metres has been built. There is enough land for possible expansion. 96 permanent employees work in Halle today, roughly treble the number at the start in 2004. 13 apprentices are currently receiving training. Part-time staff and students help out during peak periods to complete the orders within a short time.
Zur Rose Pharma GmbH’s most important partner and customer is the mail-order pharmacy Zur Rose. Its employees monitor compliance with statutory requirements at all the crucial points in the shipping process and ultimately have “sovereignty in all pharmaceutical work steps,” explains Walter Hess. These include among other things the pharmaceutical approval of customer orders and dispensing control. Extensive checks are carried out in the background for every order for prescription and over-the-counter medicines. For example, the individual public health insurance companies’ different discount agreements from all over Germany have to be matched to the manufacturers for every prescription. In addition, it is extremely important that interactions with medically prescribed pharmaceuticals are checked by software support and reported to the doctor in case of conflict or that the patient is appropriately advised. More than 200,000 prescriptions are subjected to this check every year.
Nothing would work at Zur Rose without modern software solutions. Each of the more than nine million articles commissioned during the year is recorded paperlessly using a barcode including batch number. In the case of a medicine being recalled, recipients can therefore be informed in no time at all, guaranteeing safety throughout, explains Madlen Arnold, responsible for logistics.
The Swiss Zur Rose Group with head office in Frauenfeld is dedicated to the distribution of pharmaceuticals in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. According to its own information, it is the market leader in European mail-order pharmaceuticals. Zur Rose was founded as a pharmaceuticals wholesaler in 1993 and has also been operating as a mail-order pharmacy for private customers since 2001. Zur Rose and its subsidiaries DocMorris in Heerlen (NL) and Zur Rose Pharma in Halle are active in Germany and Austria. The Zur Rose Group employs more than 800 staff at different locations.
Numerous investments by Swiss companies in Saxony-Anhalt have been supported through the State-Region Joint Agreement “Improvement of Regional Economic Structure” (GRW). Measured by the investment volume, Switzerland is in third place behind the USA and Netherlands in an international comparison between 2000 and the end of March 2015. 23 funded investment projects with a total volume of EUR 371.7 million are on the books. As a result, at least 627 new permanent jobs have been created and 3,629 permanent jobs have been secured.
Exports by Saxony-Anhalt companies to Switzerland were roughly EUR 472 million in 2014, which means eleventh place compared to all export countries. Merchandise and services worth roughly EUR 378 million have been imported. In a ranking of import countries this means twelfth place. Photo: IMG / Klaus-Peter Voigt