Press release

Zur Rose Group focuses on healthcare services in Germany at its Halle location

Zur Rose Pharma, in the German city of Halle an der Saale, has increasingly become a competence centre for marketing and services in the healthcare sector in recent years. It will continue to develop these competences in future, focussing fully as a healthcare service provider for the companies of the Zur Rose Group. The growing health-consciousness of people and the accompanying new challenges for the service providers favour the strategic development of this location with its well-qualified employees.

The realignment of Zur Rose Pharma is linked to the plans of Ulrich Nachtsheim, owner of the Zur Rose pharmacy in Halle, to withdraw from the mail-order business for reasons of age. Zur Rose Pharma has to date been primarily responsible for handling the logistics and various administrative tasks for his pharmacy. A succession solution has been proposed with the intention of serving the mail-order customers from a newly established mail-order pharmacy in the Netherlands, a subsidiary of the Zur Rose Group, should they so wish.

Around 40 employees will be affected by decision to stop providing goods and services for the Zur Rose pharmacy in Halle as of mid-2018. Zur Rose Pharma will continue to employ around 90 people and intends to further develop the location. A wide range of measures over and beyond a redundancy scheme will be set up for the employees who are affected. In addition to offers of further education, retraining options, a cooperative arrangement with the Federal Employment Agency, a job exchange, as well as active qualification of and support for job applications to companies in the region will all be supported. "We will not abandon the affected employees at this point, but will join them in finding individual solutions for their occupational reorientation," emphasises Walter Hess, General Manager of Zur Rose Pharma GmbH.

Investor and analyst contact
Marcel Ziwica, Chief Financial Officer
e-mail: ir@zurrose.com, telephone: +41 52 724 00 64

Media contact
Lisa Lüthi, Head of Corporate Communications
e-mail: lisa.luethi@zurrose.com, telephone: +41 52 724 08 14

Zur Rose Group
Operating under the "Zur Rose" and "DocMorris" brands, the Swiss-based Zur Rose Group is Europe's largest online pharmacy and one of Switzerland's leading wholesale suppliers to medical doctors. Through its business model, it helps to ensure safe, reliable and high-quality pharmaceutical care, while also excelling in developing innovative medicines management services to increase the effectiveness of the medication process. This creation of added value, the strong focus on patients and the commitment to supply medication at low cost for the benefit of payors and patients make the Group an important strategic partner for all healthcare stakeholders.

Zur Rose Group is headquartered in Frauenfeld, from where it also serves the Swiss market. In Germany and Austria, the Group operates through subsidiaries in Heerlen (Netherlands) and Halle an der Saale (Germany). Furthermore, it holds a majority interest in BlueCare in Winterthur, the leading provider of networking systems in the Swiss healthcare market. Employing more than 800 people at its various locations, Zur Rose Group generated revenue of CHF 880 million in 2016.

Zur Rose Group AG's shares (ticker symbol ROSE, Swiss security no. 4261528, ISIN CH0042615283) are traded on SIX Swiss Exchange in accordance with the International Reporting Standard of SIX Swiss Exchange. The corporate bond issued in November 2012 for the purpose of financing the DocMorris acquisition is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (Swiss security no. 19972936, ISIN CH0199729366, ticker symbol ZRO12). zurrosegroup.com