History


Laboratorios Gebro Pharma accumulates more than 20 years of history, yet its roots extend deep into a rich family legacy intertwined with the realms of healthcare, pharmacology and innovation.

Family history

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Grete Berger was born in what was then Imperial Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century. She was the daughter of Joseph Herbert Berger, the director of the Serological Institute in Vienna, and his wife Valerie. Due to health reasons the family moved to South Tyrol, where they opened a pharmacy in Meran.

Grete Berger followed her father’s steps and studied pharmacy in Vienna. However, love sneaked into her formulas when she met merchant Otto Broschek, whom she married in 1923. Otto worked in banks, publishing houses and, of course, in his father-in-law’s pharmacy in Meran. Years later, after the Second World War, the Berger family began manufacturing local anesthetics in special glass ampoules imported from Italy.

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When Josef Herbert Berger died, Grete Berger and Otto Broschek took the reins of the business and made it prosper with the distribution of German pharmaceuticals on the other side of the Alps, in Italy. In 1926 the couple welcomed their son Herbert Broschek. All went well until the outbreak of World War II forced them to return to Vienna. There they found their family home destroyed, event that made them move to the city of Vorarlberg, fleeing from the Russian armies. They boarded a train with that destination, but chance held a different ending for their journey: the locomotive stopped near the small Tyrolean village of Fieberbrunn, unable to cross a bridge shattered by bombs. It was 1945.

The first generation of our Broschek founder took refuge in a farm room for three years. There was both famine and a shortage of medicines.

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On December 1, 1947, the “Gebro G. Broschek KG” was founded in Fieberbrunn. The company name is an acronym in honor of the first pharmacist of the family, Grete Broschek. On the founding team were Herbert and his parents. Two years earlier, in 1945, Herbert Broschek’s entrepreneurial spirit had already translated into a stuffed animal factory. Those cloth animals were known as the Tiere mit Herz, “animals with hearts”.

Herbert followed his grandfather and his mother’s steps and studied Pharmacy in Innsbruck, where he met Helga Luger, also a pharmacist, whom he will marry eight years later. The family expanded to four: Grete, Otto, Herbert and Helga.

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At “Gebro G. Broschek KG”, gender equality was pioneering back in the time. Women were in charge of the technical-scientific organization and men were into management. Otto died in 1978 and Grete in 1984. Herbert and Helga and their son Pascal, born in 1969, gave way to the next generational relay. Herbert and Helga died in 2009 and 2015 respectively. Pascal Broschek currently collects all this legacy as Chairman of the Gebro Holding.

That small laboratory in the Alps is now one of the most important pharmaceutical companies in Austria and a Holding with subsidiaries in Switzerland, Hungary and Spain. The company, a reference in the area of pain, closed 2022 with a turnover of 240M and currently employs around 500 people.

Our Journey

These have been the main milestones of Gebro Pharma’s success:
1957-1968
1966
1976
1978
2000
Before 2012
2012
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
1957-1968

Significant steps were taken for the future of the company

1966

The R+D department was created

1976

Gebro went international

1978

Vital was refloated

2000

Alpinamed acquisition

Before 2012

Awards and recognitions

2012

Gebro Holding GmbH was founded

2017

Gebro Pharma signs an agreement with Richi Social Entrepreneurs

2018

Collaboration with Goodgut

2019

Collaboration with Hospital Clínic of Barcelona

2020

We contribute to the Covid-19 pandemic fight

2021

Great Place to Work and two key agreements

2022

Barcelona Health Hub and new agreements