Gall Pharma

Gall Pharma is an Austrian manufacturer of dietary supplements and care products based in Judenburg, a town in the state of Styria. It grew out of a family pharmacy: the pharmacist Dieter Gall began filling Vaseline for pharmaceutical wholesalers in the late 1970s, and the business was formally founded in 1981 [4]. The company's main trade today is nutritional supplements, but it also makes medical devices, dietetic foods and a small own-brand line of creams, salves and gels sold under the heading "Beauty & Pflege" (beauty and care).

The firm remains rooted in its pharmacy origins. According to its own account, its pharmacists still serve customers behind the pharmacy counter alongside their product-development work, and the company presents itself as a family-run business without outside investors [6]. Gall Pharma is active and continues to produce at its headquarters in Judenburg.

Dieter Gall came from a family of pharmacists. His father, Felix Gall, opened the Stadtapotheke Judenburg, the town pharmacy, in 1969 [4]. The pharmacy made its own house preparations, and it bought a tube-filling machine in order to produce them more professionally. The company's history notes that the investment at first fell short of expectations.

Toward the end of the 1970s Dieter Gall saw another use for the machine. Vaseline was in strong demand at the time, and he began filling it for sale to wholesalers. The product sold well. When he was advised not to put the pharmacy's own name on the packaging, he chose "Gall Pharma" as the manufacturer's name, which the company describes as a made-up designation at first. In 1981 the business was officially founded as a registered sole proprietorship; the company's history calls it the year "the dream became a reality" [5].

The founding date appears differently in outside listings. Austria-Forum's company directory gives 2005 as the year Gall-Pharma GmbH was founded [12]. That date matches the registration of the current limited company in the Austrian company register on 11 January 2005 [14], rather than the start of the business itself. This article follows the company's own founding date of 1981.

Through the 1980s the young company built a name across Austria. According to Gall Pharma, it became known for spotting international trends in nutritional supplements early, to the point that wholesalers regularly asked it which ingredients were available.

Growth soon outran the space inside the pharmacy. The company bought a plot of land from the town of Judenburg in 1991, broke ground on a new building in the autumn of 1993 and moved in during July 1994. The building on Grünhüblgasse is still the company's headquarters.

After Austria joined the European Union, the company says, neighbouring countries discovered Gall Pharma. In its own telling, demand from abroad was at times so heavy that its shipping partners struggled to keep up [5].

Between 2000 and 2018 the Judenburg site was expanded to more than 4,000 square metres of usable floor space. In the same period Gall founded three subsidiaries in Germany: Hecht Pharma and Bios Medical Services, both pharmaceutical wholesalers, and Leitner Lifecare, which handles alternative-medicine products [5].

Quality certification followed the expansion. The production company, GPH Produktions GmbH, has held HACCP certification, a food-safety system built on identifying critical control points, since 2007. Gall Pharma GmbH has been certified for Good Distribution Practice in its warehousing and distribution since 2009, and the company also lists certification under EN ISO 13485:2016, the quality-management standard for medical devices [8].

The company has also invested in a new capsule-filling line, the Modu-C, which it describes as built for safe and flexible capsule production. The project was co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund under the REACT-EU programme [9].

Gall Pharma describes itself as family-run and free of external investors, which it says allows the company to make its own decisions. The current legal entity is Gall-Pharma GmbH, registered in Judenburg. Production is carried out by a related company, GPH Produktions GmbH, while the three German subsidiaries handle wholesale and alternative-medicine trade.

Management is shared. The company's team page lists Dieter Gall and Sonja Schutting as its management, and the imprint of its online shop names Dieter Gall as managing director [7]. No acquisitions of other companies are known.

Much of the way Gall Pharma presents itself turns on the contrast with large drug makers. The company says that while big pharmaceutical firms concentrate on a few product segments, it will also produce formulations in small quantities and to individual customer requests. Its motto, "Es gibt nichts, was es nicht gibt", translates roughly as "there is nothing that doesn't exist".

The company lists a handful of values on its philosophy page. People, it says, are "always at the centre" of its daily thinking and work. It points to independence as a family firm, and to a hands-on way of working in which many products are still made on hand-operated machines. Profit, in its words, is necessary to run the business but "not everything".

Gall Pharma states that it has more than 1,000 different formulations and sells 35 million capsules a year, and it calls itself the largest supplier of dietary supplements in Europe [3]. No independent ranking confirming that claim is known. Its staff includes pharmacists, micronutrient specialists and nutritional scientists.

Distribution runs through several channels. The company supplies pharmaceutical wholesalers, pharmacies, drugstores and selected retail outlets in Austria, and partners distribute some of its products in other EU countries [3]. Its services also include product development, private labelling for other brands, and import.

Supplements make up the bulk of the catalogue. Trademarks listed by the company include names such as Bonsal, OSP22, Arthroplus, Sleepwell and Jocapsan, most of them supplement brands. Its online shop also carries goods from other makers, among them a natural-products line under the Pater Severin name, which is not part of Gall Pharma's own range.

The own-brand beauty and care range is small and practical. It is built around simple pharmacy-style bases and a few active formulas:

- AHA Fruchtsäure Creme, a peeling cream with fruit acids (alpha hydroxy acids that loosen dead skin cells). - Avocadoöl Salbe 15%, a salve for dry and sensitive skin, and Avocadoöl Creme 6%, a lighter moisturising cream. - A set of base preparations: Basis Creme and a paraffin-free version, Basis Salbe, Basis Gel and Basis Fettsalbe, a water-free fat salve that the company says contains no preservatives. - Anti-Aging Kapseln, capsules taken by mouth, with Pycnogenol (a pine-bark extract), green tea extract and N-acetyl-glucosamine.

The company states that its beauty products are made according to strict EU rules and without animal testing [10]. No independent cruelty-free certification is known.

The original product, Vaseline filled for wholesalers, remains central to the company's account of its own beginnings.

Gall Pharma is an active company. It continues to manufacture at its headquarters in Judenburg, supplies the Austrian pharmacy and wholesale trade, and sells its products through its own online shop. According to the company, it employs more than 100 people.