Lloydspharmacy holding company Hallo Healthcare, formerly known as McKesson UK, has sold its private travel clinic company Masta Ltd to Nomad Travel UK, an Irish-led travel group that also runs travel clinics and pharmacies.
Nomad Travel announced last week (June 12) that it had “successfully completed the acquisition” of Masta from Hallo Healthcare on Monday, calling it a “significant milestone for both companies”.
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Nomad Travel CEO Andrew Lewis said that the acquisition has made the company “one of the largest networks of private travel health clinics in the UK”.
Masta, which was established more than 30 years ago, has 32 travel clinics across the UK, according to its website. Nomad meanwhile has six travel clinics in the UK, its own company website says.
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Masta offers vaccinations both for travel and for personal use, such as the shingles vaccine, the website added.
Its clinics are nurse and pharmacy-led, a spokesperson told C+D.
Expansion plans
A spokesperson for Nomad told C+D yesterday (June 19) that Masta “will expand in the coming months” and is “actively recruiting nurses and pharmacists” for both corporate and private vaccinations.
“The synergies between the two companies allow for exponential growth” and the team is “excited about the opportunities that this deal brings,” they added.
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A spokesperson for the Hallo Healthcare Group confirmed Masta’s acquisition by Nomad Travel on Friday (June 16), adding that it was a “positive step for the travel health sector”, which is seeing “sustained growth”.
Here are the Masta and Nomad travel clinics in the UK, as of June 19:
Masta (blue) has 32 travel clinic locations in the UK, while Nomad (yellow) operates six travel clinics in the UK. Data from company websites, June 19 2023.
In April 2022, Lloydspharmacy’s parent company McKesson UK was sold to private equity firm Aurelius Group for £477 million. The group rebranded McKesson UK to Hallo Healthcare in September that year.
Soon after the acquisition was completed, reports emerged that the new owners intended to sell a “substantial number of branches”.
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Subsequently, many bricks-and-mortar pharmacies have been sold. The largest single purchase of Lloydspharmacy branches reported thus far was Rowlands’ acquisition of 30 branches across Scotland.
Meanwhile Lloydspharmacy had also closed all of its Sainsbury’s supermarket pharmacies as of June 13, as exclusively reported by C+D.
