Press Release: Middle Eastern Pharmacy Market Opens Up for Finnish NewIcon Oy: “This Serves as a Gateway to the Iranian Market”

Health technology company NewIcon Oy from Kuopio, Finland, has signed a deal to supply an Iranian clinic operating in the city of Urmia with a Mega-Fixu automated dispensing system.

While worth hundreds of thousands of euros, this particular deal is just the beginning, as a local university hospital is also poised to start investing in pharmaceutical automation.

“This deal is a major milestone for us, and serves as a gateway to the Iranian market. Our client is the first Iranian clinic to embrace pharmaceutical automation, serving as a pioneer whose example is already being followed by a local university hospital, for example. All in all, there are approximately 250 hospitals in Iran that have expressed an interest in streamlining their pharmaceutical services with the help of automation,” says NewIcon’s Marketing Director Jori-Matti Savolainen.

The deal was struck as a result of an Iranian delegation’s visit to Finland last autumn. At that point it had already been revealed that some of the economic sanctions imposed on Iran as a result of its nuclear programme were to be lifted. Upon finding out about the country’s needs regarding health technologies, NewIcon Oy quickly arranged for a ten-person delegation, composed of ministers, hospital management and construction developers, to visit to Finland.

“There is a pent-up need for health care reform in Iran, making the country an excellent market for our products, potentially worth tens of millions of euros. In other words the situation looks promising. In fact, our factory in Kuopio has just been visited by another group of Iranian guests in early February. This time the delegation was composed of leaders from the hospital and pharmacy sectors in the Tehran area,” says Savolainen.