Uriach has taken another step in its internationalization strategy, with which it aspires to position itself as one of the main European groups in the area of consumer health, which does not require medical prescription. The company led by Oriol Segarra has acquired 100% of the German company Sidroga, specialized in the manufacture and commercialization of products based on natural formulations. This purchase, which closed two weeks ago for an undisclosed price, has been the largest corporate operation in Uriach's history, followed by the acquisition of the Italian Laborest in 2015.
With this operation, financed mainly with its own resources, Uriach enters Germany, the main European market for food supplements, and Austria and Switzerland, where Sidroga has subsidiaries. The pharmaceutical company's pending subject continues to be France, which remains the priority objective for continuing its international expansion. From now on, the family business is present in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Recently, Uriach has also strengthened itself with the purchase of the Spanish brand Ceregumil, also specialized in food supplements.
"Our ambition never ends," says Segarra. For this 2021, Uriach's CEO states that they do not foresee more inorganic growth operations initially, although he adds that "afterwards, you never know." The Catalan pharmaceutical company will use this year to assimilate the purchase of Sidroga and will wait until 2022 and 2023 to continue its European expansion, without ruling out acquisitions of companies of the German company's size, taking into account, as Segarra points out, that they are accumulating more and more experience.
The purchase of Sidroga, with a turnover of about 60 million euros and a workforce of 150 employees, also brings Uriach closer to one of the objectives of its strategic plan, which sets a turnover of 300 million for 2022. In fact, thanks to this acquisition, Uriach expects to reach this milestone earlier than planned.
Sidroga, a historic German company
Sidroga is a historic company in Germany, where it was founded in 1858, as is Uriach, which was founded in 1838. Sidroga has century-old brands, such as the one that bears the same name as the company, specialized in phytotherapy products and medicinal teas. With offices in the town of Bad Ems, near Frankfurt, the company also offers a line of natural products based on the thermal waters and salts of this tourist destination, which are used to treat winter pathologies, such as coughs or mucus. It also has a range of food supplements and health products marketed in parapharmacies, stores, and drugstores. Before the purchase by Uriach, Sidroga was owned by the family office of the Strüngmann family, who was one of the co-founders of BioNTech, a German biotechnology company famous for having developed one of the vaccines against covid-19.
For now, Uriach has not specified which Sidroga products will be sold in Spain nor which of its own will be sold in Germany, but it does expect many commercial synergies in both these two countries and in the rest of the markets in which it operates. In addition to these commercial synergies, which the family company also exploited in its entry into Italy, its size, its commitment to innovation, its portfolio with historic brands, and its two production centers in Germany, which will be added to the two that Uriach has in Palau-solità i Plegamans and Sant Fost de Campsentelles, have been valued as decisive factors for its purchase.
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Uriach continued to grow in 2020 despite the pandemic
Uriach's results in 2020 have been marked by covid-19, but the pandemic has not prevented it from continuing to grow. Products like Biodramina have not been very successful, but those that help you lose weight, such as those from the Aquilea line, became popular when the lockdown ended and the extra kilos accumulated by forced sedentary life began to show. Those that help you relax or sleep better have also been successful, considering that the last year has been hard for everyone. Likewise, the company expects to emerge stronger from the coronavirus crisis, with a society more concerned about self-care and well-being.
Thanks to this diversification of activities, as well as geographical, the Catalan pharmaceutical company, specialized for a decade in the consumer health market, outside the world of medical prescription, has surpassed 2020, registering a turnover of 240 million euros, 5% more than in 2019. Ebidta has also grown by 5%, to 48 million euros. "Uriach feels very fortunate," Segarra defends. The consumer health division, its main engine, has achieved a turnover of almost 165 million euros ---with Sidroga it reaches 225 million---, while the B2B business has obtained 74 million in turnover. With these results, Uriach adds another year of growth, a trend that has been going on for eight consecutive years.