Costco building third central fill center in Sacramento

ISSAQUAH, Wash. Costco reported a 4 percent increase in year-to-date sales and said it’s building a new central fill center—its third—in Sacramento, Calif.

Costco is partnering with McKesson Corp. on the fill center that’s due to open in December. Earlier this year, Costco announced that it was building its second central fill in the Southern California city of Corona that’s due to open in late 2008.

Together, the two fill centers will fill online orders and serve stores in California, Las Vegas, Arizona and Northern Nevada. “We felt that California was too big a state to put on the back of one fill center,” explained Vic Curtis, Costco’s VP of pharmacy. The Corona fill center, which is being run in conjunction with AmeriSource Bergen, will serve California warehouses as far north as Bakersfield, said Curtis.

Costco also reported a 4 percent increase in total pharmacy sales of $1.95 billion for the first nine months of its fiscal year, with a nearly even split between prescriptions and OTC. Prescription sales increased 2 percent while OTC sales rose 6 percent year-to-date.

Curtis said Costco’s prescription business is feeling the effects of popular drugs going generic and a lack of new ones to replace them.