Lloyds Pharmacy continues offloading stores as CEO departs

Lloyds Pharmacy parent company Hallo Healthcare has sold 32 Masta stores, its private travel clinic, to Irish firm Nomad Travel last week as part of its continued drive to offload assets.

It has also been revealed in Companies House listings that Lloyds CEO Ken Birch stepped down from his role last month after only eight months in charge.

The company stated that Birch had “stepped back from his operational role but will continue to support the company strategically.”

Companies House filings also show that Lloyds has divided its assets into 82 smaller companies which were all incorporated between November 2022 and June 2023.

This goes some way to explaining how the company has been able to sell swathes of its stores in recent months.

Lloyds sold 30 Scottish stores to Rowlands Pharmacy while five stores were sold to Davidsons Chemists and Kamsons Pharmacy respectively.

This news comes after the company announced last week that it was closing all of its 237 branches in Sainsbury’s stores.

This was originally meant to be a gradual process but the company took the decision to speed up the process.

Lloyds said in a statement: “Lloyds Pharmacy is reviewing its community pharmacy estate and is selectively selling some branches. The majority of buyers of these selected branches are independent pharmacy owners and local businesspeople who have demonstrated their commitment to our branch teams and patients and are well placed to meet the ongoing health needs of the local community.

“In addition to this, Lloyds Pharmacy were also pleased to confirm in May 2023 that colleagues from 30 of its branches in Scotland will be joining the Numark family. The Lloyds Pharmacy team is pleased that its colleagues from these stores will be joining successful, local businesses and that for patients there will be no change in the way they use their local pharmacy.”