Lloyds Pharmacy is the largest community pharmacy operator in the United Kingdom. It operates over 1,700 pharmacies, located primarily within local communities and health centres. The company also has pharmacies in Ireland, that trade as "Unicare Pharmacy".

It has around 16,000 staff and is the 25th biggest UK retailer with around £1 billion turnover.

Each of the pharmacies provides a wide range of professional services to the local community, including health checks such as blood pressure testing, collecting prescriptions from local GPs and delivering them to customers. Most of their pharmacies have consultation areas for customers to speak privately with a pharmacist.

Contents 1 Advertising 2 About the Company 3 History 4 See also 5 External links

[edit] Advertising

Lloyds Pharmacy previously used Philippa Forrester in their TV advertising campaigns. One of their key selling points is selling medical electrical products at reduced prices to assist people in monitoring their health. For example, they use to sell blood pressure monitors for less than £10 but have now increased it to just under £15 . They also promote health issues in other ways - for example not selling suntan cream with a factor of less that 15 and offering free diabetes tests.

[edit] About the Company

Lloyds Pharmacy is the trading name of Lloyds Pharmacy Limited, which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Celesio AG (previously called GEHE AG), the largest pharmaceutical wholesaler in Europe. Celesio AG purchased AAH plc (the UK’s leading pharmaceutical wholesaler) in 1995, and then in 1997, acquired Lloyds Chemists PLC, which at the time had 902 pharmacies. Together with AAH’s 350 strong Hills Pharmacy network, this took the combined group to over 1300 pharmacies. Lloydspharmacy was formed in March 1998 and has now grown to over 1600 pharmacies within the UK.

AAH (Amalgamated Anthracite Holdings) are now the pharmaceutical wholesale division of Celesio in the UK.

Celesio recently raised concerns of the July 2006 merger of Alliance Unichem and Boots the Chemist that formed Alliance Boots

[edit] History

Lloyds Chemist began in 1973 when Allen Lloyd purchased his first pharmacy in Polesworth, Warwickshire, England, UK. It is estimated he made a £32 million fortune from the Lloyds Pharmacy Empire.

The Head Office is located at Sapphire Court in the Walsgrave Triangle Business Park in Coventry, England

They broadcast a live radio station (Lloydspharmacy Live!) within their stores; presenters include ex-BBC Bruno Brookes.

Lloyds Pharmacy are known through their brand as "Your Local Health Authority"

A close association with Diabetes UK has developed due to Lloyds completing over 1 million diabetes tests [free in-pharmacy] so far in the UK.

[edit] See also

• List of pharmacies

[edit] External links

• Lloyds Pharmacy
• Unicare Pharmacy
• www.celesio.com
• www.haniel.com
• AAH Pharmaceuticals

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