Weston takeover of Boots won’t cure pharmacies’ ills, says Parcelhero
The Weston family’s £6.7bn deal to buy Boots has ended Sycamore Partners’ brief ownership, but the harder question is what the new owners do with the business. Boots is the last giant standing in an increasingly sickly pharmacy market that has lost more than 1,300 outlets in two years. Its future depends less on its roughly 1,800 stores than on whether it can win in a health market that is moving online.
That’s the view of home delivery experts Parcelhero, whose new report, ‘2030: The High Street Fights Back?’, charts how community pharmacy has gone from the high street’s quiet stalwart to its most volatile sector.
Wittington Investments, the Westons’ Canadian holding company, agreed last week to buy Boots from Sycamore for $8.9bn including debt. Wittington also owns the 1,300-store Shoppers Drug Mart chain in Canada, giving it the pharmacy, beauty and loyalty experience Boots will need. But will it be enough to ensure the 177-year old chemist continues to stay healthy?
David Jinks MILT, head of consumer research at Parcelhero, says: ‘Just ten years ago, pharmacies looked like the safest corner of retail. The sector had a steady 14,389 stores, 49% of them owned by the top 12 operators. The arrival of online prescription services changed that.
‘As “2030: The High Street Fights Back?” reveals, the UK lost a net 787 chemist outlets in 2023, followed by a further 604 in 2024. Both are net figures, so no new shops opened to replace them. It was the worst performance of any retail sector over those two years.
‘The biggest casualty was Lloydspharmacy. As recently as 2020 it was the UK’s second-largest pharmacy retailer, with 1,054 branches. All were sold or closed by the end of 2023, and the business, by then renamed Diamond DCO Two Limited, was liquidated in 2024, owing creditors £293m. The Lloydspharmacy name has since reappeared online, bought earlier this year by the Pharmacy2U Group.
‘The idea that a chemist was a safe, undramatic retail business has been completely overturned. When Parcelhero wrote our first report on the impact of e-commerce, “2030: The Death of the High Street”, in 2016, we didn’t even analyse the sector, because it looked like the one part of town centre retail that would never change. We could not have foreseen the implosion of the High Street pharmacy market in the face of the unprecedented growth of online pharmacies.
‘Boots is now the last giant standing, and it is about to change hands for the second time in little over a year. Lloydspharmacy went from well over a thousand branches to a liquidation and a revived online brand, which tells you where the market is heading. The Westons already run a huge pharmacy chain in Canada and understand how prescriptions, beauty and loyalty fit together. That’s a very different proposition from a US parent that has been selling off the pieces.’
Boots’ long walk
‘The fact Boots has a new owner should come as no surprise. It follows the 2025 takeover of its US parent, Walgreens Boots Alliance, by private equity firm Sycamore Partners. Sycamore split Boots out as a standalone group, and Parcelhero’s latest report notes that this was widely seen as a prelude to selling it separately. Boots has now been sold rather than floated on the London Stock Exchange, denying the City a flagship listing.
‘The shake-out has also reached the wider health and beauty aisle. Bodycare, the high street toiletries, cosmetics and fragrance chain, went into administration in early September 2025 and had closed all its stores by the end of that month.
‘Whoever owns Boots, the lesson from our report is that the future of pharmacy is as much a logistics challenge as a retail one. Prescriptions, weight-loss treatments and repeat health orders are increasingly delivered to the door, and the Westons, with their e-commerce and loyalty experience in Canada, will know that.
‘The question for the high street is how many of the 13,000-odd community pharmacies still standing can compete with that model. The closures of 2023 and 2024 suggest we haven’t yet seen the end of the shake-out. “2030: The High Street Fights Back?” is available now at https://www.parcelhero.com/en-gb/resources/ebooks/2030-the-high-street-fights-back