How to Verify a UK Pharmaceutical Supplier: A 2026 WDA Licence Check Guide

If you are a hospital procurement lead in Riyadh, a Ministry of Health buyer in Nairobi, an NGO logistics officer, or a licensed distributor anywhere from Istanbul to Almaty, at some point a UK company will offer to supply you medicines. Some of those companies are exactly what they claim to be: MHRA-licensed wholesale dealers holding genuine, fully licensed finished product. Others are brokers, intermediaries, or worse, operators offering stock they are not authorised to sell. The cost of getting that judgement wrong is not only commercial. It is patient safety, regulatory exposure, and the reputation of your institution.

The good news is that a UK pharmaceutical supplier can be verified with a short sequence of independent, public checks. You do not have to take a supplier's word for anything. This guide sets out how to run that due diligence in 2026: how to check the Wholesale Dealer's Authorisation (WDA), how to use the MHRA register, how to confirm Good Distribution Practice and the Responsible Person, how to read Companies House, what documentation a genuine supplier hands over without hesitation, and the red flags that should make you stop. It is written for the buyer side, the people conducting due diligence before placing an order.

One point to state plainly at the outset. Euro Biom is a UK MHRA-licensed pharmaceutical wholesale exporter supplying UK-licensed, MHRA-authorised finished medicines. We hold Wholesale Dealer Authorisation WDA(H) 59239. We are not a manufacturer, pharmacy or retailer. Everything below is exactly the verification we would expect a serious buyer to run on us, and on any UK supplier, before ordering.

Why Verifying a UK Supplier Matters

The UK is a trusted origin for finished medicines because of the standards behind that supply chain, not because of the postcode. A medicine only carries that assurance if the company selling it is genuinely licensed to hold and distribute it. The legal wholesale distribution of medicines in the UK is a regulated activity: a company cannot lawfully buy, store, supply or export licensed human medicines by wholesale without a Wholesale Dealer's Authorisation issued and inspected by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

That single fact is what protects you as an overseas buyer. When you deal with a properly authorised WDA holder, you are dealing with a company the MHRA has assessed against Good Distribution Practice, that operates from an inspected site, and that is accountable to a named Responsible Person. When you deal with an unlicensed intermediary, none of that applies, and the falsified and diverted medicines that occasionally reach supply chains almost always enter through exactly that unregulated gap.

Verification protects you on three fronts at once: the medicine is genuine and correctly handled, the transaction is lawful at the UK end, and, if a problem ever arises, there is a licensed, traceable, accountable company behind the product. The rest of this guide is the practical method for confirming all three.

Step 1: Check the WDA Licence (WDA(H) and What It Covers)

The first and most important check is the licence itself. Ask the supplier, in writing, for their Wholesale Dealer's Authorisation number. For human medicines this is written as WDA(H) followed by a number, for example WDA(H) 59239. The letters and format matter:

• WDA stands for Wholesale Dealer's Authorisation, the licence required to trade licensed medicines by wholesale in and from the UK.
• (H) denotes human medicines, as opposed to veterinary products, which sit under a separate regime.
• The number is unique to that authorisation and ties to a named company and an inspected site.

Confirm three things about the licence, not just that a number exists. First, that the activities authorised cover what you need: a WDA(H) can be scoped to procurement, storage, supply and export of licensed finished medicines, and you want a supplier whose authorisation covers export. Second, that the company name and site address on the licence match the business you are actually dealing with. Third, that it is a wholesale dealer authorisation for licensed human medicines, and not a different authorisation type. You may also see references to manufacturer's authorisations (MIA), or to authorisations for investigational medicinal products used in clinical trials (MIA(IMP)), which are different activities. For routine supply of licensed finished medicines, the WDA(H) is the licence that matters.

Step 2: The MHRA Wholesale Dealer Register, GMDP and EudraGMDP

A licence number is only useful if you can check it against an authoritative source. That source is the MHRA. The MHRA maintains records of every authorised manufacturer and wholesale dealer in the UK through its Good Manufacturing and Distribution Practice (GMDP) system, commonly referred to as the MHRA GMDP register. Authorised wholesale dealers appear with their authorisation number, company details and the authorised site.

There are two practical ways to use this:

• Check the published register. The MHRA publishes information on licensed manufacturing and wholesale dealer sites. Confirm that the WDA(H) number, the company name and the site address the supplier gave you all appear and all match. A mismatch between the trading name and the licensed entity is a common warning sign worth investigating.
• Contact the MHRA directly. If you cannot reconcile a licence from published information, the MHRA can be contacted to confirm the standing of a wholesale dealer's authorisation. For a large or first-time order, this is a reasonable step to take.

You may also encounter EudraGMDP, the European database of manufacturing and wholesale distribution authorisations and GDP certificates. Historically it listed UK sites, and it remains a reference point for European authorisations and certificates. Since the UK left the EU, Great Britain sites are verified through the MHRA rather than through EudraGMDP, so for a Great Britain wholesaler the MHRA record is the authoritative check. The principle is the same either way: confirm the licence against the regulator's own record, not against a certificate the supplier simply emails you.

Step 3: GDP Compliance and the Responsible Person

Holding a WDA(H) is not a one-off event. It carries an ongoing obligation to comply with Good Distribution Practice (GDP), the set of standards that keep medicines genuine, traceable and within their required storage conditions from the point they are received to the point they are despatched. GDP compliance is a condition of the licence: the MHRA assesses a wholesaler against GDP before granting the authorisation, and inspects against it through the life of the licence.

Central to GDP is the Responsible Person (RP). Every WDA holder must name an RP on the licence, a suitably qualified and experienced individual who is personally accountable for ensuring that the company operates to GDP. The RP oversees the quality system, the handling and traceability of stock, the qualification of customers and suppliers, and the management of any product complaints, returns or recalls. When you ask a genuine supplier about their RP and their GDP quality system, you should get a clear, confident answer.

Practical questions worth asking a UK supplier:

• Who is your named Responsible Person, and are they named on your WDA(H)?
• How do you qualify the suppliers you buy from, so that stock only ever comes from authorised sources?
• How do you maintain the cold chain for temperature-sensitive lines, and how are excursions handled?
• What is your procedure if a batch is recalled after it has shipped?

These are not awkward questions. They are the everyday substance of a compliant wholesale operation, and a licensed supplier will welcome them. Our GDP compliance guide explains what good looks like in more detail.

Step 4: Companies House and Company Standing

The licence tells you the company is authorised to distribute medicines. Companies House tells you the company is real, properly constituted and in good standing. In the UK, Companies House is the official public register of companies, and its records are free to search. For any UK supplier you should confirm:

• Company registration number. A genuine UK company has a registered number. Euro Biom Ltd is registered in England and Wales under company number 15380737.
• Company status. The record should show the company as active, not dissolved, in liquidation or subject to a strike-off notice.
• Registered name and address. These should be consistent with the name on the WDA(H) and with the address the supplier trades from.
• Incorporation date and history. This tells you how long the company has existed and whether its details have been stable.
• Directors and persons of significant control. These show who stands behind the company.
• Filing history. An active company files accounts and confirmation statements on time; a pattern of overdue filings is worth noting.

Cross-checking the two records is the point. The company name and address at Companies House should line up with the entity on the MHRA wholesale dealer authorisation. When the licensed entity, the registered company and the party you are actually corresponding with are one and the same, you have removed most of the risk of dealing with an intermediary hiding behind a licensed name.

Step 5: Documentation a Genuine Supplier Provides

Verifying the company is step one. Verifying the product is step two, and it happens through documentation. A genuine UK wholesale exporter supplies a consistent, checkable paper trail with the goods. Depending on the destination market and the order, that pack typically includes the following.

Two points sit behind that table. First, the documentation should be internally consistent: product names, strengths, batch numbers and quantities should agree across the invoice, the CoA and the batch release certificate. Second, a genuine supplier provides this readily, because it is simply the record of a compliant transaction. A supplier who cannot or will not produce batch documentation, or who is evasive about the marketing authorisation status of what they are selling, is telling you something important. For a fuller walk-through of the export pack, see our guide to UK pharmaceutical import documentation, and the pharmaceutical glossary for definitions of each term.

Red Flags of an Unlicensed or Broker Supplier

Most problem suppliers reveal themselves through the same handful of signals. Treat any of the following as a reason to slow down and verify before money or an order changes hands.

• No WDA(H) number, or one that will not reconcile. An inability or unwillingness to provide a licence number that matches the MHRA register is the clearest single warning sign.
• Name and licence do not match. The party you are corresponding with is not the entity named on the authorisation, suggesting an unlicensed intermediary operating behind a licensed name.
• No named Responsible Person and vague answers on GDP. A genuine wholesaler can name its RP and describe its quality system without hesitation.
• No verifiable Companies House record. A company that cannot be found on the register, or that is dissolved or in the process of strike-off, is not a safe counterparty.
• Prices far below the realistic market. Pricing that is too good to be true usually is, and can indicate diverted, falsified or otherwise irregular stock.
• Pressure to pay in full up front to unfamiliar accounts. Aggressive payment demands to personal or newly created accounts, especially combined with urgency, are a classic fraud pattern.
• Reluctance to provide batch documentation or a CPP. If the paper trail cannot be produced, the assurance behind the product cannot be relied on.
• Offers of unlicensed, falsified or diverted product. Any offer of medicines that are not genuine, licensed, and correctly sourced should end the conversation.

None of these checks is difficult, and none requires you to be a UK regulatory specialist. They simply require you to insist on evidence and to confirm it against public, authoritative sources before you commit.

How Euro Biom Evidences Its Own Licence

The verification above is exactly the process we expect our own customers to run on us, and we make it straightforward. Euro Biom Ltd is a UK MHRA-licensed pharmaceutical wholesale exporter based near Heathrow, supplying UK-licensed, MHRA-authorised finished medicines to hospitals, Ministries of Health, NGOs and licensed distributors across the GCC, Africa, Turkey, the Levant and CIS/Asia. For due diligence, our details are:

We welcome verification. You can check our WDA(H) number against the MHRA record, our company number at Companies House, and request our documentation before placing an order. For more on what we do and how supply works, see our services, our named patient supply route for UK-licensed product, and our compliance page.