Tamer Group began manufacturing pharmaceuticals in Saudia Arabia in 2001. The group is now one of the leading healthcare organisations in the country 

Saudi Arabia has made remarkable progress in the past decade: heavy investment in social development, reduced public debt and relaxed investment regulations and tax laws are just a few of the initiatives put in place by the government to encourage a climate for private investment.

The young population is better educated and more willing to accept change than it previously was, and Western social values are not seen in the same negative light they once were. Nowhere in the country has this social progress been more visible than in the healthcare sector, where new hospitals and clinics have sprung up across the country, answering the needs of a growing, multifaceted workforce.

Humble beginnings
Back in 1922, when a young doctor by the name of Mohammed Said Tamer established the Kingdom’s first pharmacy in Jeddah, there was an acute need for medicine in the city both for residents and for the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims that passed through it on their way to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Dr Tamer established the pharmacy to fill this void and provide a service to the community.

Over nine decades later, that modest pharmacy has expanded to become the leading conglomerate operating in the fields of pharmaceuticals manufacturing, medical instruments and supplies, high-end third-party logistics services, pharmaceutical retail, and the distribution of nutrition, wellness, beauty and prestige products. The group’s companies include joint ventures with some of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the world.

For instance SAJA, the Saudi Arabian Japanese Manufacturing Company, is a joint venture with leading Japanese pharmaceutical companies Astellas and Daiichi Sankyo, which are the second- and third-largest pharmaceutical companies in Japan, respectively.

Tamer Group has continued to outpace the healthcare market in the last five years, increasing its business an average of 25 to 35 percent per year

Tamer Group companies invest in state-of-the-art medical facilities such as the JCI-accredited International Medical Centre (IMC) in Jeddah, and in Arab Company for Pharmaceutical Products (ARABIO), an emerging niche in biopharmaceuticals – the first biological manufacturing facility in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) medical sector.

Partnership is an area of focus for the company. In today’s complex business environment, cooperation and synchronisation of strategies is important in reaching desired objectives. Partnership provides a better model for collaboration and ensuring satisfied customers. The company’s principals are its partners, and together they are one team.

Looking forward, the Tamer Group is focused on partnering with local and international firms to expand its drug manufacturing business. The company recently purchased 500,000 square metres of land on which to build logistics and manufacturing facilities. It is also working to increase its footprint in the retail sector, and has established a joint venture with two large pharmaceutical distribution companies to invest in a chain of pharmacies in the Kingdom and neighbouring countries.

Tamer Group’s third-party logistics company has established an efficient 3PL that was selected by major international companies like Nestlé and Kraft (Mondelez) to be their third-party logistics services provider across the Kingdom.

Healthcare in Saudi Arabia
Tamer Group has continued to outpace the healthcare market in the last five years, increasing its business an average of 25 to 35 percent per year. As the market has matured, it has evolved from a simple product distribution company to a full-scale healthcare institution, which imports, manufactures, distributes and promotes products, as well as providing after-sales service to the healthcare community.

The Saudi Arabian pharmaceutical market is estimated to be worth over $5bn, and is growing. Over 4,000 pharmacies distribute around 6,000 registered and generic medicines, making Saudis the largest consumers of pharmaceutical products in the GCC and MENA region. Annual health costs are estimated at over $600 per capita, and the Saudi Arabian government spends 4.3 percent of its GDP on healthcare, making it the biggest spender in this sector.

There are over a dozen pharmaceutical plants producing mainly generic drugs, but with 1.6 doctors per 1,000 population, and a dearth of beds, the market is underdeveloped: the Kingdom still imports over 80 percent of its medicines.

The government has encouraged increased private sector engagement in healthcare and, recently, the Tamer Group has worked with several prominent institutions to establish ARABIO, a vaccine factory to supply vaccines to Saudi and neighbouring countries in the MENA region. The government considers this a strategic commodity that will be available in the event of a crisis or pandemic, and the ARABIO has taken the lead by opening the first vaccine production facility in the Middle East.

Human capital development
But growth and prosperity has not distanced the Tamer Group from the spirit of philanthropy and service to the community that characterised it from the very beginning. That spirit continues to this day and pervades all aspects of the group’s operations, as Tamer recognises that human capital is vital to its prosperity. As such is at the centre of its attention, from its commitment to developing its employees to its community, environmental and social programmes.

“Empowering, training, developing and matching the skills and competencies of the Saudi nationals to the requirements of the job market is key to the success of the economy of this country and of the Tamer Group’s future. The private sector needs to focus its efforts to support the government’s programmes of nationalisation and to strive to cover the mismatch in competencies between the educational offering and the practical skills and specialisations required in the private sector, particularly when it comes to healthcare.

“The shortage of Saudi pharmacists in the Kingdom, which is estimated at 30,000 plus, is one of the examples of this mismatch,” said Ayman Tamer, Chairman and Managing Partner of the group.

Hiring and training women is also a priority for Tamer Group, and it aims to increase the number of female employees from 60 at the moment to 300

The Tamer Group takes it upon itself to train its employees on the job. Having set up training academies, the group enhanced the overall performance, job satisfaction and retention rate of new employees thanks to its carefully designed intensive training programme, which is co-sponsored by the Human Resources Development Fund. Hiring and training women is also a priority for Tamer Group, and it aims to increase the number of female employees from 60 at the moment to 300, or 10 percent of its staff, and to encourage them to participate and compete for leadership positions in the organisation.

Furthermore, the group’s strategy to develop its human capital capabilities includes a scholarship programme to enable employees to pursue higher education and agreements with various universities in Saudi Arabia to recruit trainees and permanent staff. Ongoing workshops on topics like healthcare and safety, and initiatives like staff exercise and health assessment programmes complement the educational and training offering.

All these reflect the fact that employees are indeed at the centre of the group’s endeavours and help to explain why last year Tamer Group was voted as the second best work environment in Saudi Arabia in Al Eqtisadiah’s newspaper annual ranking. While the group does its part to contribute to community-building in the Kingdom, it would like to see a more concerted effort among private companies in this area.

A platform for CSR
“It is the duty of every leader to have dual responsibility, one for the performance and success of his organisation and the other for his contribution to the community,” said Tamer. The initiative that perhaps best illustrates Tamer Group’s engagement with the community is its corporate social responsibility platform, SA’AID. The name of the programme means ‘forearm’, which symbolises the part of the body that connects the ‘community’ to the hand, which symbolises ‘the company’.

In English, ‘SA’ is an abbreviation of Saudi Arabia, while Aid represents reaching out and collaborating. SA’AID is structured to address five main areas or arms: namely, health awareness and education; art and culture; environmental conservation; workplace wellness; and women’s empowerment.

As a leading healthcare group in Saudi Arabia, Tamer Group understands that health education and prevention is a service of utmost importance to the community, given the prevalence of lifestyle-related diseases among the youthful population. As such, the group engages with the Saudi population through holistic approaches that incorporate technology, social media, and school and community activities.

Partnering with the Ministry of Health, schools, universities, malls and other pharmaceutical companies, Tamer Group works to raise awareness about the effects of lifestyle-related conditions like obesity, diabetes, and hypertension by building sustainable programmes such as health education films, through which SA’AID aims to build a digital library that will be uploaded through social media and distributed to all public and private hospitals and healthcare centres.

“I would like to see the group on the path to continued growth, all the way acting as an agent of social development in Saudi Arabia,” said Tamer. “And, thinking outside the box, I envision the possibility of branching out into additional business lines to address the needs of the Saudi society, such as the establishment of training centres aimed at developing soft skills.”