Changes in financing and regulation, digitalization, and the evolving needs of the healthcare industry have all posed challenges for market players. Hungaropharma, one of Hungary’s most significant pharmaceutical wholesale companies, celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024, marking the beginning of a new era. According to CEO Judit Füzesi, the company’s future lies in conscious renewal, diversification, innovation, and ethical operation.
How do you see the current state of the sector? What are the main strengths, weaknesses, and challenges in Hungary today?
The Hungarian pharmaceutical market has changed extremely rapidly in recent years, requiring a new kind of adaptation from all players. Its greatest strength remains its high professional standards and the primacy of patient safety. The domestic supply chain is well organized, and as a result, market stability has been maintained despite the challenges. At the same time, the sector faces increasing difficulties: rising costs, labor shortages, and logistical pressures are all factors that affect operations in the long term. The rapid changes in the economic and regulatory environment, as well as the effects of inflation, also place a heavy burden on market participants. The answers to these challenges are flexibility, conscious strategic development, and innovation. We can only maintain the safety, quality, and sustainability of pharmaceutical supply if the sector’s players respond quickly, responsibly, and in a timely manner.
Hungaropharma closed its 75th year in 2024. What did this anniversary mean for the company?
This year was not only a celebration but also a turning point. Seventy-five years of experience is a tremendous legacy, but we are thinking not about the past, but about the future. For Hungaropharma, this anniversary marked the beginning of a new era: with a strategic and conceptual paradigm shift, and with entry into new platforms, the time also came for a brand renewal. Our previous philosophy, that “we deliver healing,” remains a core value, but today our mission means much more than that. We leave healing to the healers and delivery to the carriers, Hungaropharma aims to become a key player in the broader spectrum of healthcare. Our goal is to expand beyond pharmaceutical wholesale and play an indispensable role across the entire healthcare value chain.
How is this new strategic direction realized in practice?
Our most important strategic goal is to diversify our activities and strengthen our market presence. This is happening in several directions: on one hand, by expanding our business and product portfolio, and on the other, by introducing innovative B2B and B2C services. We are also entering new healthcare markets that are closely related to, support, and complement our pharmaceutical-grade logistics services, while also offering new growth opportunities.
In the long term, Hungaropharma builds its future on innovation, cost efficiency, and sustainability – what we call a non-pharma-focused omnichannel vision built on pharma logistics. We are not making small adjustments but carrying out a comprehensive rethinking. Our goal is not just to be flexible, but to be a fast-reacting, dynamic, and forward-looking market player.
The healthcare of the future will be integrated, data-driven, and patient-centered, and we are adapting to this on the logistical, technological, and service levels as well. Hungaropharma’s new 75-year “journey” is therefore not a continuation of the past but a conscious, future-oriented change of direction.
What do you see as Hungaropharma’s main competitive advantages?
One of our most important advantages – or rather, values – is credible professionalism. Hungaropharma’s operations have always been characterized by fairness, transparency, and ethical business conduct. For us, these are not just slogans but operational principles. What we promise, we deliver. This is also the essence of our responsibility toward our partners and the profession.
In recent years, we have further developed our 360-degree, pharmaceutical-grade logistics capabilities, which enable us to serve the entire national pharmaceutical supply network. In parallel with our B2B activities, we are also developing in the B2C direction, as services that reach patients directly may play an increasingly important role in the future due to the rise of self-care and digital healthcare trends.
Diversification and dynamism are capabilities that are rare in a corporate environment but are essential for us. We believe that there is no true progress without capacity expansion, the extension of business operations, and qualitative development.
Hungaropharma often emphasizes ethical operation. How does this appear in everyday practice?
Hungaropharma not only follows but also preserves the written and unwritten rules of pharmaceutical trade and takes responsibility for ensuring their observance – even on behalf of others. The company’s ethical and business code is clear: “Be innovative, and always keep your promises.”
This mindset permeates every one of our decisions. For us, ethics is not a PR tool but an operating principle. The question is not what we do, but how we do it. And the answer is always the same: ethically, professionally, and responsibly.
In the current market environment, when many small and medium-sized enterprises struggle to maintain competitiveness, it is especially important to have players who represent stability and transparency. Hungaropharma is such a player: it not only follows but also shapes professional standards.
How do you see the long-term future of the company and the sector?
The keywords of the future are cooperation, innovation, and ethics. The safety of pharmaceutical supply can only be maintained on shared professional foundations. We will continue striving to be the “golden standard” of pharmaceutical trade Ñ a model of fairness, transparency, and professional credibility.
Hungaropharma has now become firmly embedded in the structure of the Hungarian national economy. Our results speak for themselves. We do not need to prove our indispensability or our position, because the recognition of our partners and the healthcare profession proves that we are on the right path.
This article was first published in the Pharma Industry Review 2025 / 2. print issue.
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