Mubadala buys majority stake in Al Ittihad Drug Store

Dubai: The Abu Dhabi wealth fund Mubadala is taking 80% in Al Ittihad Drug Store as well as in Global Medical Supply Chain, earlier owned by GlobalOne Healthcare Holding. The latter will retain 20%.

Formed in 1987, Al Ittihad Drug Store is one of the UAE’s bigger distributors of pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare products. With over 1,000 products from over 40 leading suppliers, IDS supplies ‘every hospital, and all, or at least most pharmacies and supermarkets within the UAE’.

Founded in 2015, GMSC provides end-to-end supply chain services for medical products, including demand planning, procurement, logistics, inventory management, warehousing, and maintenance. GMSC serves 200 plus medical facilities across the UAE.

“The expanding pharmaceutical market drives an increasing demand for specialized and efficient drug logistics solutions,” said Ismail Ali Abdulla, Executive Director of UAE Clusters at Mubadala's UAE Investments Platform. “By integrating GMSC and IDS into our portfolio, we are poised to create a vertically integrated life sciences sector in the UAE.”

In October, Mubadala bought out four entities - Bioventure, Bioventure Healthcare, Gulf Inject and Wellpharma – that were part of GlobalOne Healthcare. The latter, incidentally, is the healthcare arm of Yas Holding.