Sunshine Holdings and Akbar Brothers merge healthcare businesses

Sri Lanka’s diversified conglomerate Sunshine Holdings PLC announced the merger of their healthcare business consisting of Sunshine Healthcare Lanka and Healthguard Pharmacy with the healthcare arm of Akbar Brothers. It consists of Akbar Pharmaceuticals, Lina Manufacturing and Lina Spiro.

The strategic merger will create Sri Lanka’s first fully integrated healthcare company starting from manufacturing up to retailing of healthcare products, including last-mile distribution across the country for all healthcare products. The company will be operating in all five segments of the healthcare supply chain, namely R&D, manufacturing, importation, distribution and retail.

This merger will also enhance the pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in the country with both leading business groups working together to invest in this critical national building sector. By combining their strengths, the merged healthcare business will be able to build further manufacturing capacity as well as develop and scale up production of existing and new molecules, work with regional pharma companies to drive tech transfers and overall increase the local production of medicines as envisaged by the President of Sri Lanka’s Vision ” Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour”.