The Australian competition authorities have approved Aspen's acquisition of the Australian IN business and the transaction will be effective in Australia from 28 April 2013. The South African and Namibian competition authorities' approval of the acquisition of the Southern African IN business is pending.

The nature of the transaction and the assets relating thereto are set out below:

- Aspen will have the exclusive right of use of the Nestlé (previously Pfizer) S26® and SMA® IN product trademarks for a period of 10 years("licensed products")in Australia and Southern Africa;

- Aspen will also have the right to co-brand the licensed products over the initial 10 year period and to transition these products to Aspen branded products over this period;

- For a further 10 year period, commencing after expiration of the initial 10 year exclusive licence period, Nestlé will be precluded from commercialising the licensed products (so-called "10 year black out period"), effectively providing Aspen with a 20 year period to establish equivalent Aspen branded IN products;

- Aspen will have a perpetual licence to the IN technology, technical know-how and formulations existing at the effective date plus access to an agreed licensed product pipeline together with related technology developments for a period of 5 years from the effective date;

- There will be a transfer of the ownership in the operating businesses from Nestlé to Aspen and this will include the transfer of the employees within those businesses; and

- Aspen will be provided with transitional service arrangements by Nestlé and Pfizer including the manufacture and supply of licensed products under a non-exclusive arrangement. These arrangements will provide Aspen with the flexibility to transition the manufacture of IN products to its own sources of supply including to its own IN manufacturing facilities within a 3 year period.

The transaction presents a good commercial and strategic fit for Aspen, given its heritage with these brands and its strength in the IN market in South Africa coupled with its local manufacturing capabilities. In Australia the transaction will synergistically augment Aspen's strong presence in the grocery and over-the-counter market segments. The transaction will provide Aspen with an enhanced platform from which to extend the global footprint of its IN business in the medium term.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

SUPPLY UPDATE

SERENACE INJECTION  5mg ® (haloperidol )

Aspen Item Number  009241

You may be aware that Serenace Injection 5mg has recently been out of stock from your Wholesaler.  Serenace Injection will continue to be on back order as we address a manufacturing change from an overseas supplier. We expect Serenace Injection to be back in stock with wholesalers sometime after 8 May, 2013. Aspen is unable to supply Serenace Injection before this date and we currently have no emergency stock of Serenace Injection. We apologise for any inconvenience that may occur form this out of stock.

Other Serenace presentations are in stock and can be ordered from your wholesalers . If you have any questions on Serenace or other Aspen products, feel free to call  your local Aspen Hospital Representative or call the Aspen Contact Centre on 1300 659 646 or see updates in the Hospital Pharmacy section of Aspen Australia’s website, www.aspenpharma.com.au.

Yours sincerely

Peter Penn

Senior  Product Manager   

Aspen will provide further details of the conditions that will be implemented in further communications to Doctors and Pharmacists.

Doctors may continue to prescribe both products after carefully considering the indications, warnings and contraindications in the Product Information and Consumer Medicines Information for these products.

Di-Gesic is available at retail pharmacies. Information on the availability of Doloxene, which is currently out of stock, will be provided shortly.

Di-Gesic Product Information

Doloxene Product Information

The AAT referred the matter to the TGA for reconsideration, and while the TGA affirmed its decision to cancel the registrations of the products in September 2012, the decision to cancel is stayed until further order of the AAT. A further hearing before the AAT was held on 27 and 28 February 2013 and a decision is pending.

Aspen remains committed to ensure that patients are not left without adequate pain relief, and considers that this is likely to be the case if Di-Gesic and Doloxene are de-registered.

Di-Gesic is back in stock. Doloxene is on back-order.

Read the previous news release from September 2012.

We currently have stocks of Buspar 5mg and 10mg that expire at the end of October 2012 but will be unable to supply the Buspar brand after this expiry date, until further notice.  Please note that for now   patients can still obtain Buspar from their pharmacy although some wholesalers are no longer stocking it and some pharmacies may be out of stock. If patients have difficulty obtaining current batches of Buspar please call Aspen Australia on 1300 659 646 (option 5) for advice on how to obtain the current batch.

If  Buspar is considered essential therapy for some patients who have no alternative options, Aspen has made arrangements to supply buspirone hydrochoride under the trade name Anksilon from 1 November 2012, as a ‘special access scheme’ (SAS) Category B product. Medical practitioners can advise patients of these arrangements.

Information for Pharmacists

These products are an excellent fit with Aspen Australia’s current portfolio, complementing our existing range and will strengthen our position as one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in Australia. 

The Tribunal also notes that the literature indicates that the safety of DPP at therapeutic doses is not materially different to other weak opioids and does not support a finding under the Therapeutic Goods Act that the safety of DPP is unacceptable.

The decision has been remitted to the Minister/TGA to consider appropriate conditions on the registration of DiGesic and Doloxene.  In the interim, both products will remain on the ARTG.

Below is the full determination from the AAT for your information.

“We are privileged to support efforts of the Philippine government and other stakeholders in improving Filipino patients’ access to quality, effective and safe medicine that are within the means of the general public,” said Greg Lan, chief executive officer of Aspen Pharmacare Australia.

“Our product portfolio includes some of the most prescribed brands in Australia, South Africa, Middle East, North America, Germany, and Canada. We want to bring to Asia affordable prescriptions with the Aspen stamp of quality,” said Trevor Ziman, deputy CEO of Aspen Pharmacare Australia.

Read more at the links below:

Philstar.com

Manila Bulletin

GMA News

Companies, government agencies and industry associations sign the Covenant and commit to certain responsibilities which contribute to achieving the Covenant Performance Goals and KPI's. Anyone involved in the packaging supply chain is invited to sign the Covenant.

All signatories to the Covenant recognise that a co-operative approach between industry and all spheres of government is essential to achieving national consistency in the lifecycle management of packaging and the implementation of sustainable kerbside collection systems.

Click here to view a PDF copy.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) has granted Aspen Australia’s application to stay the cancellation of products containing dextropropoxyphene (Di-Gesic and Doloxene) from the ARTG. This allows us the opportunity to have our appeal of the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s (TGA) decision to cancel the registrations heard by the AAT.

The products affected are:

Di-Gesic (dextropropoxyphene HCl 32.5mg/paracetamol 325 mg) 20’s- Aust R 52509

Doloxene (dextropropoxyphene napsylate 100 mg) 10’s- Aust R 161853

This means that pharmacists may continue to dispense Di-Gesic and Doloxene until further notice.

The AAT is expected to hear the appeal within the next 4 months. If, following that appeal, a decision is made to cancel the registrations of Di-Gesic and Doloxene, these products will  then cease to be available within a short timeframe.

Further news will be available on this website as it becomes available.

Please feel free to leave any comments regarding Di-Gesic or Doloxene in the form below.  f you have any questions regarding the above information please contact us.

If you are taking Di-gesic or Doloxene and have any concerns please discuss them with your Doctor or Pharmacist. 

Aspen's first subsidiary in the region, Aspen Philippines, will begin operations this year. It represents the company's initial step to replicate its success in Asia. "We want to bring to Asia affordable prescriptions with the Aspen stamp of quality," says deputy CEO Trevor Ziman. "It is a thrill to change someone's life through our medicines – this is the passion that drives us."

Aspen's growth has been guided by its relationships and contrarian approach across all facets of the business. The company's sales representatives have an average age of 65 years old, each bringing 30 to 40 years of experience and understanding of clients' needs and products.

Aspen's more than 800 products combine proprietary and licensed drugs, ranging from over-the-counter to prescription dermatology, cardiovascular, neurology and oncology medications.

Choosing to collaborate rather than compete with larger multinational corporations, Aspen offers an alternative by which companies can capitalise on quality products that receive limited resources and marketing spending. Aspen's back-to-back licensee partnerships include major industry players such as Novartis, Merck, Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline.

In addition to pursuing the Philippines, Aspen plans to deepen its footprint in other Asian markets. It eyes Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, the mainland and Japan as key destinations in the next three years.

"Our goal is to reach more doctors and provide high-quality, regulated, reliable and affordable medicines," Ziman says. "We also want to bring partners the business acumen, market knowledge and financial backing that we have as a solutions-driven brand builder."

2012 Australia Report - SCMP

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Aspen has a long-standing relationship with Lilly, having partnered with the company on Evista® (raloxifene hydrochloride) and is pleased to be continuing this relationship; especially on Zyprexa® which has been and will continue to be an extremely important medication for Australian patients.

The acquisition was approved following the extraordinary meeting of Sigma shareholders held on 14 January 2011. The effective date of change of ownership is 31 January 2011 and will position Aspen as the leading pharmaceutical company in Australia by volume of scripts generated.

Stephen Saad, Aspen’s Group Chief Executive, said “Aspen is excited about this acquisition which enables the Group to accelerate growth in its Australian business and also to stimulate expansion plans into the broader Asia Pacific region. Aspen has already demonstrated its ability to supply high quality products at competitive prices across more than 100 worldwide territories. We have confidence in our Australian management team to leverage Aspen’s world-class procurement, manufacturing and distribution capabilities to ensure the expanded Aspen business delivers growing value in Australia.”

In 2010 Aspen announced that it had reached a formal agreement to acquire Sigma’s pharmaceutical business on a debt-free basis for a cash consideration of AUD 900 million. The purchase consideration is approximately ZAR 6 148 million, based on an AUD/ZAR exchange rate of 0.1464 as at 13 January 2011. The transaction was however subject to a number of conditions precedent which have now been fulfilled.

For more information please read the document below:

Aspen Sigma Purchase

Sigma has now reached formal agreement with Aspen on the terms and conditions of the sale and the ongoing relationship between the two companies.

Sigma Deal

This licensing deal takes Aspen gross annualized sales in Australia and New Zealand to around $230 million, excluding Asia and the proposed Sigma transaction.

The products involved are:

• Antroquoril
• Celestone
• Diprosone
• Eleuphrat
• Elocon
• Novasone
• Propecia

Please be assured of our ongoing commitment to good customer service and a seamless process, however, should you have any queries, please feel free to contact Aspen at any time.

STEPHEN SAAD: It’s hard to make a comment around what Sigma’s mistake or mistakes were, but if I have to say something, they made a big acquisition which probably didn’t work out for them as they had hoped. So we’re not paying the same pricing that they paid for those acquisitions and I do think that we have a very good knowledge base within Aspen of how to succeed in the global market, whereas Sigma was very insular in the Australian market. We do understand pricing in markets like India, South Africa – and the developed markets as well. So I think we have an expertise and we’ve got a lot of synergies that we’re hopefully going to extract. It’s hard for us to quantify them now, Alec, because those synergies depend on us talking to a lot of people to make sure what we’re think we can do, we really can do. But of course our due diligence has really been limited largely to a electronic database rather than being able to actually deal with individual people on the ground.

ALEC HOGG: You’re unusual in many ways – well, yourselves and perhaps, Investec – in doing well in Australia. Many South African businesses that have gone there have struggled. What is the difference, why have you guys cracked it?

STEPHEN SAAD: I think our Aspen model has never been a prescriptive model, so we’ve not said that because it works in South Africa, it must work in Australia or in Brazil, for example. So we try to understand the market, the market dynamics, and then see what we’ve got to match that. I think a lot of other people have said, this is our model and we’re going to make it work there. I’m not talking about South African companies only; I’m talking about some of the bigger companies that I’ve noticed, even in, say, Latin America and in Australia. People try and adjust the market for their model and it’s not necessarily the right way to look at it. I always look at the market first and then we adjust our model to see that it can fit in there. We went in Australia, we went niche. As much as we wanted to throw out a huge generic strategy because we’re strong with that, we didn’t think we could crack it because companies like Sigma were so strong and had had the pipelines into it. So we didn’t push – we went into niche generics. This has given us an opportunity now to roll out the broader Aspen model in Australia, which we for nearly ten years have not seen the opportunity.

ALEC HOGG: Stephen, the late Graham Beck, when he died just over a week ago – I investigated his business success and he was a hugely successful entrepreneur who did well by buying businesses cheap. You seem to be following a similar kind of model.

STEPHEN SAAD: I think that a lot of the Aspen success story has been more than just buying businesses cheap. We’ve had the firepower to turn what is sometimes a spotty dog into something that looks a little bit more fashionable. So, if you look at a lot of the Aspen product growth has been driven my organic pipelines, being able to get licensing deals, driving manufacturing strategies, first to market with anti-retrovirals etc, etc. But it is important – the big bets you take on acquisitions, it’s no use paying a fancy multiple if you can’t get a return on it. I suppose, Alec, it’s always been a philosophy – because we started with such a small business and I started as a sole operator- that I’ve never looked at something and asked is this the right P/E to pay or not the right P/E. I don’t worry about things like that. I spend my time saying how quickly can we repay the money on this money that we outlay. It’s as simple as that. Are we going to get paid back for this? I think this is one that, if we do the right moves, we’ll really get paid back on this investment.

ALEC HOGG: What kind of time are you putting in your own mind for that payback?

STEPHEN SAAD: Obviously the first year is a year in which we need to settle things down. But I think that you should see in year two some significant uptake in our returns.

ALEC HOGG: That’s Stephen Saad, the chief executive of Aspen Pharmacare. It really is a fascinating story. If you are having a look for a South African company that could be following in the steps of SABMiller and making an impact internationally, this might just be the one. The company was born in Durban just over a decade ago, and is expanding aggressively into the international markets as Stephen was saying in another part of that discussion. One of the big influences there in this transaction was none other than Simon Marais, the former chairman of Allan Gray here in South Africa, and now the chief investment officer of Orbis in Australia. Simon Marias gave the thumbs-up to the transaction and no doubt he is hoping that the Allan Gray guys here, who are shareholders in Aspen, will benefit as well.

Go to Moneyweb South Africa.

At Aspen Pharmacare the workplace is marked by two distinct features; (i) nearly 75% of staff work flexibly, either part-time, from home, using flexible start and finish times, or a combination of all three; and (ii) the average age of the sales force is around 60, with the youngest sales representative aged 40 and the oldest age 83 (amounting to an accumulated 1480 years of experience!).  According to Greg Lan (the Managing Director) and Rob Koster (the Director of Sales and Marketing) Aspen's high level of flexibility has shown demonstrable business outcomes in addition to the attraction/retention of diverse talent, including consistently meeting sales objectives and extremely high value customer relationships.  We interviewed Koster and Lan to find out what's going on.

 4.1  Background

Aspen Pharmacare is a South African based company which commenced operation in 2001 in Australia.  The Australian arm employs 79 staff across sales, service and management roles, and of the 53 sales and marketing staff, 38 work flexibly (part-time with flexible hours).  The company has a portfolio of products which generate current annual sales of around $150 million and are owned by the Aspen Group and also licensed by other companies, including pharmaceutical multinationals.

The head office is based in Sydney and every state has a storage facility so that interstate employees work can from a "regional home office".  There are 26 people in the head office who work in supply, accounts, finance and regulatory affairs, and of these staff, 8 are full-time and the remainder work flexibly.  Everybody in head office "multi-tasks" (eg by answering a ringing phone or responding to a customer when needed) rather than responding according to a rigid hierarchical task allocation.

4.2  Flexibility and maturity at work

Of the 53 sales representatives at Aspen, 38 work part-time, also accessing work from home and/or flexible start and finish times.  The organisation provides workstations at the Sydney office, but when and where sales staff complete their work is up to the individual.  A very high level of trust and autonomy is afforded to staff at Aspen who are allocated their customers and defined sales territories and left to decide how best to conduct their sales strategy depending on the number of days they work.  When workload becomes too high, or employees want more work, they can negotiate a change.  This model differs markedly from many other pharmaceutical companies where flexibility in the sales force is restricted by historical cultural barriers (eg head count) which dictate a requirement for full-time sales staff. 

Interestingly, within head office, where a high proportion of staff work flexibly, each team shares the workload according to capacity and hours.  So, for example, a team of five in a particular department may all work part-time, but structure their days, hours and workload to ensure that all tasks are covered and deliverables are met.  Rather than "job-share" Aspen has employed "work-share" as a job design strategy.

The mature age workforce at Aspen was the result of a strategic decision to employ people who had experience, a track-record, existing contacts and reliable relationships that they could bring with them to the job.  Frequently, the people applying for positions in the company who bring these attributes are also mature age, and highly motivated to continue working.  The company offers flexibility to respond to many of these people's need to reduce their very heavy workloads whilst maintaining a good salary and interesting work.  Tax benefits associated with fewer hours often mean that an employee's salary is still competitive despite working part-time.

4.3  The business outcomes

(i)  High quality customer relationships

Aspen has data which demonstrate the success of their sales force in comparison to their competitors.  A survey conducted in 2008 by CEGEDIM of Doctors assessing pharmaceutical sales representatives showed that Aspen ranked higher than many other companies on their objective and ethical behaviour, quality of relationships, flexible and adaptive behaviour and the ability to handle questions and objections.  Some sales staff at Aspen who service regional Australia actually stay with the Doctors they sell products to, rather than hotels, an example of the close personal relationships they have established over time.

(ii)  Achieving sales targets

Aspen consistently achieves its sales targets and their focus is very much on products which have a well-established and particular use, so the sales staff know where and how the products should sell.  Their sales strategy is deliberately non-aggressive, they provide the information without pushing and because of many of their long-term relationships, individual sales staff know the products a particular customer will want.

(iii)  Positive work environment

Staff concentrate on their core activities at Aspen and because the company is small and flexible, sales staff spend only essential time on administration and additional activities.  The work environment is positive and employees can discuss their flexibility requirements openly with colleagues and management.  All internal salaries for sales staff are equal, so people can move around, take-up or reduce their workload without the hierarchical constraints found in more rigid workforce structures.  According to Lan and Koster salary is not the driving motivational factor for staff, rather work-life balance, work satisfaction and customer relationships are the drivers for engagement.

4.4  Conclusion

The organisational model of Aspen Pharmacare is unique in the Australian pharmaceutical industry and there are elements of it which are made possible because of size and autonomy from their global parent and which may not be possible in a larger Australian pharmaceutical.  However, in terms of the mindset and culture around flexibility, the elements of openness, responsiveness, trust and autonomy within the organisation could be useful lessons for other companies employing a sales workforce who are struggling with flexibility for this group.

For more information about Aspen Pharmacare, go to www.aspenpharma.com.au.  Thanks to Greg Lan (Managing Director) and Rob Koster (Director of Sales and Marketing) for sharing their experiences.

Read the Original Article.

There are few brands in the prescription world with the equity and recognition of Tritace and Cardizem, which together account for annual sales in excess of $30 million. This takes Aspen Australia's annual turnover to over $130 million, and our company to another level. The addition of these two power brands to our stable of well-known, tried and trusted products is a coup, and will increase our prestige among health professionals.

The partnership with Sanofi-Aventis is another milestone for Aspen Pharmacare.

We are very fortunate that a company like Actavis, which is one of the world's leading players in the development, manufacture, and sale of first-class generic pharmaceuticals, would choose Aspen Australia to partner them in this country. This shows the confidence that major companies now have in Aspen's ability to take on old brands and revive or grow them. Our track record speaks for itself.

With the addition of these new products to our portfolio, Aspen Australia is now sitting on annualised sales of over $135 million - and growing.