Vertex sends first pharmaceutical shipment to North Korea

First delivery to North Korea

St. Petersburg-based Vertex has delivered its first pharmaceutical shipment to North Korea: around 19,400 packages valued at 5.35 million rubles. North Korea is the Russian manufacturer’s first export destination in East Asia and its second in the Asia-Pacific region. The shipment includes generic medicines and hair growth sprays, with products intended for both retail pharmacies and hospitals.

Pharmacy sales were scheduled to begin in early June 2026. The shipment’s medicine assortment includes:

Cardiac medicines containing lisinopril or losartan, in different packaging sizes.
A memantine medicine for dementia.
An asthma medicine containing montelukast.

Vertex pharmaceutical manufacturer

Earlier entry into Laos

Vertex had entered Laos in June 2025 with its first shipment of medicines and cosmetics to that country. The delivery contained more than 1,500 packages and followed approximately a year of preparation. The company arranged logistics and payments before dispatch. Laos became its first export market in Southeast Asia and in the wider Asia-Pacific region.

The shipment included original combination medicines, generics and skin, hair and leg-care cosmetics. Under the agreement with the importer, Vertex sent products in Russian packaging for subsequent application of consumer-information stickers in Laos. The products were intended for pharmacy distribution. Across all export markets, rather than Laos alone, Vertex’s first-half 2025 export sales totaled approximately 505,000 packages worth about 126 million rubles.

Quarterly export and operating results

Vertex’s first-quarter 2026 revenue reached approximately 5.9 billion rubles excluding VAT, increasing about 4% from the corresponding period of 2025. Export deliveries approached 375,000 packages, nearly three times the year-earlier volume. Its principal destinations included Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Laos. The quarterly results preceded the first North Korean shipment.

Medicines accounted for approximately 90% of Vertex’s product sales; cosmetics and dietary supplements made up the remaining assortment. Products on Russia’s vital and essential medicines list represented more than 73% of its medicine sales by volume and about 64% by value. The company’s portfolio contained more than 430 product positions, including over 310 medicine positions counted across different dosages and pack sizes.