According to company spokesperson Gabe Weissman, AmeriSourceBergen’s distribution network handles nearly 35% of all the pharmaceuticals sold and distributed throughout the US and plans to build three new sites to help support this.
The company “currently operates 25 distribution centres in the US,” he told Outsourcing-Pharma.com, and efforts such as this to expand its distribution network helps to “increase efficiency and drive innovation in pharmaceutical distribution and the delivery of healthcare.”
The new centres will be located in Olive Branch, Mississippi; Shakopee, Minnesota; and Newburgh, New York. Construction set to begin early this summer and is expected it will be up to two years before they are operational.
The expansion comes as part of a continued ramp-up of operations both in the US and globally. Over $1bn (€900,000m) has been invested across its network in the past decade, with a site in Columbus being the last centre to have benefitted.
“We have more than doubled the volume going through the facility during the March quarter, and we will continue to add additional manufacturers to its programmess over the remainder of the fiscal year,” CEO Steven Collis told investors in April (transcript here).
Such a large distribution network requires controls to guarantee GDP compliance for both the security of the supply chain and the environmental conditions for the storing and distribution of pharmaceuticals. However, Weissman did not respond to how AmeriSourceBergen ensures this when asked.