JCCO Healthcare, which includes Chemist4U and the weight management platform myBMI, announced yesterday (September 7) that it has received a £12m cash injection from an investor.

The funding was provided by Bolton-based equity investment company Pitalia Capital, which specialises in healthcare and manufacturing and is funded by SpaMedica founder Anil Pitalia, it said.

Chief executive of both Chemist4U and myBMI James O’Loan said that the funding would “turbocharge growth”.

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The “growing” online pharmacy has acquired a c40,000 square foot property in Skelmersdale to centralise its operations and plans to increase its workforce from 120 to 150 within 18 months, JCCO Healthcare added.

The online pharmacy handles 190,000 orders a month and is “on track” to hit £29m turnover in the 12 months to the end of September – up from £21m in 2021/22 – it said.

 

Meanwhile, myBMI is “on track” to hit £10m turnover in 2023/24, having only been founded in 2021, it added.

“Huge growth potential”

Mr Pitalia said that Mr O’Loan and his business partner Ricardo Laverty have “done an incredible job and are a very entrepreneurial and innovative team”, having “really embraced technology”.

“We see huge growth potential”, the investor added, highlighting the online pharmacy’s “hugely convenient and efficient” next-day delivery system.  

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It comes as margins in the pharmacy sector “are so tight that some pharmacies are failing”, Pitalia Capital managing partner John Davies said.

 

“The only way to make it financially viable is through the diversification of the service/product offering and automation at higher volumes and Chemist4U now has the infrastructure and fire power to deliver this at a significant scale,” he added.

Big plans

Mr O’Loan said that his plan is “for Chemist4U to become one of the biggest NHS dispensing facilities in the country”, as well as to “support partners” with its outsourced dispensing services – its “fastest growing division”.

Chemist4U has three divisions – NHS dispensing, an OTC medicine platform at www.chemist4u.com and a white labelled outsourced dispensing pharmacy service, according to JCCO Healthcare.

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Mr O’Loan, who joined Chemist4U as a superintendent pharmacist in 2012 before becoming chief executive in 2018, added that the company has had “plenty of investor interest” but “didn’t feel the need to rush” because it was “profitable”.

He and chief operating offer Mr Laverty had not been seeking investment until Mr Pitalia assisted them with the Skelmersdale property acquisition and “wanted to get on board as an investor to turbocharge the growth”, he said.

The company wants to “digitalise” NHS, over-the-counter (OTC) and private medicine provision and already has automation in place, but the new premises will allow it to “expand the robotics, centralise the dispensing” and create a “really efficient process”, he added.

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Patients can order and receive a prescription without leaving their home via the Chemist4U app, with prescriptions coming to the online pharmacy electronically, automatically shipped from its warehouse with next-day delivery and tracked on the app, Mr O’Loan said.

Meanwhile, he added that the investment will also allow mBMI to “expand its services further in relation to weight management”, following the launch of weight loss drug Wegovy in the UK this week.

In August last year, Mr O'Loan announced that Chemist4U company would give each of its employees a £750 bonus – spread across September, October, and November – to account for increasing fuel and energy prices.