By IDSE News Staff
USAntibiotics, the nation’s lone manufacturer of Amoxicillin/17602" target="_blank">amoxicillin and amoxicillin-clavulanate (amox-clav), announced a new collaboration with Walmart and McKesson through its joint venture partner ClarusONE Sourcing Services to provide domestically manufactured antibiotics.
The collaboration will see USAntibiotics supply millions of doses of amoxicillin directly to Walmart pharmacies and to McKesson for distribution to pharmacies, health systems and healthcare providers nationwide beginning in August 2025. This collaboration aligns with McKesson’s continued commitment to fortifying the U.S. supply chain and strengthening healthcare access through its digitally connected distribution network, and it also builds on Walmart’s pledge to invest an additional $350 billion in products made, grown or assembled in the United States by 2030.
Both amoxicillin and amox-clav have been in shortage since November 2022, according to ASHP. One survey found that 90% of surveys suffered a shortage of amoxicillin that lasted up to seven months between November 2022 and May 2023, causing a shift in prescribing patterns from amoxicillin or amox-clav to a third-generation cephalosporin (Antibiotics [Basel] 2025;14[3]:313).
Patrick Cashman, the president of USAntibiotics, testified before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in a hearing about drug shortages.
“We have witnessed time and again that the root cause of pharmaceutical drug shortages is the lack of domestic manufacturing in the United States,” Mr. Cashman wrote in a statement before the hearing. “As the only remaining American manufacturer of Amoxicillin finished doses, we urge Congress to focus on long-term solutions to protect Americans’ national and public health security.”
“We are thrilled to work with Walmart and McKesson to bring domestically manufactured antibiotics directly to American families,” he said in a statement when the collaboration was announced, adding that manufacturing medications in the United States was “a commitment to America’s health security.”
USAntibiotics’ 394,000-square-foot production facility in Bristol, Tenn., has the capacity to produce enough amoxicillin products to meet 100% of the nation’s demand for these essential medications. The collaboration with Walmart and McKesson is a significant step forward in helping Americans have stable access to high-quality, domestically produced antibiotics through one of the nation’s largest pharmacy networks. With Walmart pharmacies and McKesson’s vast nationwide distribution footprint, the collaboration will make domestically manufactured amoxicillin widely available in every corner of the country.
“Together ClarusONE and USAntibiotics are building a resilient supply chain while also ensuring we’re meeting the needs of the communities we serve,” said Hanna Watson, the president of ClarusONE.
“This collaboration exemplifies the power of American businesses working together to strengthen our supply chains and serve our communities. Our work continues to improve access to care and create better health outcomes for all,” Ms. Watson said.
“We believe American medicine should be made in America. It is a public health risk and a national crisis that so much of our medicine and pharmaceutical manufacturing for the United States has been offshored to foreign countries, like China, leaving us vulnerable to their whims and resulting in a lack of transparency and weakened supply chain. For America to build and maintain a sustainable generic drug industry, lawmakers must support policies that prioritize U.S. manufacturers, and ensure public-private partnerships with relevant agencies to give preference to domestically produced drugs,” Mr. Cashman said.
Bringing medication manufacturing to the United States has been a talking point of President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order in May to restore domestic production capacity of critical pharmaceutical products. The order cut back on the “federal, state and local requirements ranging from building standards and zoning restrictions to environmental protocols that together diminish the certainty need to generate investment for large manufacturing projects.”
Mr. Trump said unannounced FDA inspections were also a hindrance. “It is in the best interest of the nation to eliminate regulatory barriers to the domestic production of the medicines Americans need,” he said in the executive order, and called for the streamlining of restoring and building pharmaceutical manufacturing.
USAntibiotics is part of the Jackson Healthcare family of companies.
