Farmaciile Dona borrows 10m euros from BCR and opens another 30 pharmacies

Farmaciile Dona, one of Romania’s biggest pharmacy networks, controlled by Romanian entrepreneurs, contracted a 10m-euro loan from BCR for its working capital.

“This year, our priorities are boosting the number of pharmacies and connecting the internal structure of the organisation, of support departments, to the continuously rising business. We want broader nationwide coverage and this is why we’re trying to cement our position in large cities where we already have pharmacies and we’re not forgetting the counties with no Dona pharmacies so far, either,” said Ana-Maria Petculescu, marketing manager of Farmaciile Dona.

At present, the network has 170 stores and it plans to add about 30 by yearend. Thus, Dona ranks third in terms of the number of retail pharmacies, after Sensiblu and Catena, each with 200 such stores.

Last year, Dona, a business owned by Nicu Nistor and Eugen Banciu (Banciu also holds 40% in Farmexpert distributor) reached 142m-euro turnover, compared with 109m euros in 2009.