The Russ­ian man­u­fac­turer of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts OAO Nizh­pharm (a sub­sidiary of the inter­na­tional hold­ing STADA Arzneimit­tel AG in Ger­many) intends to acquire the brand prod­uct port­fo­lio Aqualor. The sell­ers of the brand are But­ter­wood Hold­ings Lim­ited, located in Cyprus, and ZAO Phar­mamed, located in Moscow.

The pur­chase price for Aqualor amounts to a total of €131 mil­lion. The com­ple­tion of the con­tract is expected for the first quar­ter of 2014. The deal includes the trans­fer of the rights to a wide range of OTC seawater-based prod­ucts for treat­ing sinusi­tis and sore throat.

A frame­work agree­ment to pur­chase Aqualor evi­dently indi­cates STADA’s inten­tion to strengthen its busi­ness activ­i­ties in Rus­sia. It is not by chance that the com­pany chose the Aqualor brand. Since its launch in 2007, Aqualor has demon­strated vig­or­ous sales growth and is now one of the lead­ing prod­ucts in the mar­ket seg­ment for sea­wa­ter prod­ucts. In 2012 its net sales amounted to approx­i­mately €28 mil­lion, with an annual growth rate of 34%.

‘Aqualor is a very well estab­lished and rec­og­nized brand’, com­mented Sergei Shulyak, CEO of the DSM Group. Besides that, it was reg­is­tered as a bio­log­i­cally active sup­ple­ment, which means that there are almost no restric­tions regard­ing its pro­mo­tion. Now Aqualor is sold only in Rus­sia, but STADA expresses a keen inter­est in launch­ing the brand in other CIS and Euro­pean mar­kets.