Rowlands Pharmacy
Mark Bather has been appointed as Rowland Pharmacy’s new managing director, after joining the company in December 2018 as retail operations director.
Bather was named as managing director on 4 June 2019, following the departure of Kenny Black who left the company to “pursue new career opportunities”.
Bather’s retail career encompasses 26 years as a Tesco store director, and two years as Telefónica’s UK and Ireland head of stores.
In a press release, Bather said that “community pharmacy faces extremely tough trading conditions”, but he believes Rowlands “are building a great team and developing a strategy to deliver the healthcare services which our patients and the NHS want and need”.
He added that he was “excited to begin shaping the Rowlands estate”.
In February 2019, Rowlands revealed that it was selling 70 of its 516 pharmacies. At the time, Black said that the company was “changing our dispensing processes in order to deliver sustainable, profitable growth for the business, enable colleagues to spend more time with patients and reinforce the role of Rowlands pharmacies as local healthcare hubs”.
“As a result, we need to focus our investment on a slightly smaller Rowlands pharmacy network than we have today,” added Black.
