Speciality pharmaceutical firm Alliance Pharma has become a truly global business, its chairman said yesterday as it unveiled a 49% leap in annual profits and 11% increase in sales.
The Chippenham-based firm completed the £132.2m acquisition of rival Sinclair IS Pharma’s range of skincare products in December last year – a move that effectively doubled the size of the business. 
At the time the firm described the deal – its largest to date – as “transformational” and yesterday it showed that in just two weeks the addition of the Sinclair Healthcare Products Business added £800,000 to Alliance Pharma’s sales.
Total revenues for the year to December 31 came in at £48.3m with pre-tax profit at £15.2m.
Chairman Andrew Smith said: “We will broadly double the scale of our business – in sales, profits and people. We have extended our reach from around 40 countries to over 100, greatly strengthened our presence in Europe and Asia, and extended our portfolio to some 90 products.
“Alliance is now a truly international business with significant growth prospects. The current year has started well and we are progressing successfully in the integration of the Sinclair Healthcare Products acquisition.”
Alliance sells in more than 100 countries worldwide via direct sales, joint ventures and a network of distributors.
It said integration of the Sinclair products and teams was on track and would continue throughout this year. Its Chippenham office remains the group and UK headquarters while its international distributor management is run from its international business centre in Paris where it has around 20 staff. It is also setting up a small office in Singapore to manage operations in SE Asia.
The Sinclair products acquired under the deal included five key growth brands – scar prevention gel Kelo-Cote, Flammacerium, which prevents infections in extensive burn wounds, mouth ulcer relief range Aloclair, stretch mark treatment Kelo-stretch and dermatitis cream Atopiclair.
They have been added to Alliance’s 60-strong existing portfolio which includes dry skin treatment Hydromol, bladder cancer treatment ImmuCyst, the eye care product MacuShield, Ashton & Parsons Infants’ Powder – a natural remedy for teething pain – and Lypsyl lip balm.
Alliance said its activities in China grew considerably last year. It acquired five child nutrition brands with annual sales of around £1.5m from Sinopharm Nutraceuticals Shanghai which it said had significant turnaround potential.
It is now marketing them through its part-owned Synthasia business. Additionally, one of the key growth brands acquired from Sinclair was Kelo-cote, a scar treatment gel that sells particularly well in China.
Alliance said: “After some years of preparatory work we now have a portfolio of products around which we are developing our business in China, and we look to build on this platform over the next few years. To facilitate our trading in China we have established a ‘wholly-owned foreign enterprise’ in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone.”
Alliance said it would maintain its long-term ‘buy-and-build’ strategy for business growth, including seeking more acquisitions.
“Our increased capitalisation and greatly strengthened international position will significantly enhance our ability to grow both organically – by our access to much larger markets – and through further acquisitions,” it said.
