Who supplies Polish hospitals: what 103,076 medical supply awards in 12 months show

Polish hospitals publish a lot. Every contract for medicines, consumables or equipment above the EU thresholds ends with an award notice on TED, and each notice usually names the company that won each part of the order. Twelve months of them show a market that buys in very small slices, from a short list of large Polish companies, and very rarely from abroad.

Putting it simply: in twelve months, Polish public buyers published 13,608 award notices for medical supplies (CPV division 33), with 103,076 individual awards won by 1,678 companies. Only 1.4% of the awards went to companies registered outside Poland. Among the twenty most frequent winners, the nine we have researched are distributors, manufacturers that also distribute, or Polish subsidiaries of global manufacturers, and the top winner describes itself as a distributor of medicines for hospitals. Most lots with a reported number of offers received exactly one. A manufacturer entering this market usually does so through a Polish company, and the notices tell you which ones win.

How we counted

Cresques reads TED contract award notices for supplies from the daily and monthly notice packages (see our methodology). For this post we took notices from buyers in Poland published between 1 November 2025 and 6 November 2026, with a main CPV code in division 33 (medical equipment, pharmaceuticals and personal care products). We used the same evidence rules as the app: only live notices (versions replaced by a correction are left out), and an award repeated by a later notice of the same procedure is counted once. The figures were computed on 8 November 2026.

Four caveats matter for reading the numbers:

• An award is not a tender and not an amount of money. An award is one winner on one lot or contract line. Polish hospitals split pharmaceutical and consumable tenders into dozens, sometimes hundreds, of lots, so one notice carries many awards. 103,076 awards came from 13,608 notices.
• We do not total values. Some published values are framework ceilings or implausible amounts, so we do not add them up.
• A foreign group's Polish subsidiary counts as Polish. When Medtronic Poland or Roche Polska wins, the notice shows a Polish company, and so do we. The 1.4% measures direct wins by foreign-registered entities, not the reach of foreign groups.
• Roles are researched for a subset. Where we describe a company as a distributor or a manufacturer's subsidiary, that comes from Cresques' AI-researched classification, with quotes checked on the company's own pages. Where we give no role, it is not yet researched in our data.

What hospitals buy

By the four-digit CPV class of the notice, four classes dominate:

Pharmaceuticals produce the most awards from the fewest winners: 307 companies share 33,262 awards. Medical equipment is the reverse, with 892 companies sharing 10,812 awards. One likely reason is that equipment is more specialised and brand-specific, though the counts alone do not prove it. Consumables sit in between.

The buyers are the large university and regional hospitals. Counted by buyer entity, the twelve most active buyers each made between 942 and 2,145 awards in the period, led by the university hospital in Wrocław, followed by hospitals in Warsaw, Legnica, Gdańsk, Białystok, Siedlce, Gdynia, Kraków, Lublin, Bydgoszcz, Elbląg and Słupsk.

The channel: wholesalers, distributors and subsidiaries

These are the twenty most frequent winners:

The top five winners together hold 25,679 awards, 24.9% of the division. Three groups stand out.

Medicine distributors sit at the top. Urtica won 7,783 awards from 386 different buyers. On its own website, Urtica describes itself as a distributor of medicinal products for hospital care, and NEUCA Group says wholesale distribution of medicines to pharmacies is the core of its business.

Specialised medical distributors come next. Bialmed won 4,184 awards from 416 buyers, the widest buyer base of any winner (Urtica follows with 386 and Asclepios with 380), and our research classifies it as a distributor; so are Skamex and Anmar. Zarys and Sinmed both make and distribute.

Manufacturers' Polish subsidiaries form the third group: Aesculap Chifa, Medtronic Poland, Stryker Polska and Johnson & Johnson Poland are classified as subsidiaries of manufacturers in our data. They win directly because their groups have built a local company. For a manufacturer without one, these are competitors, not channels.

One offer per lot

The base here is different from the award count: lots where the notice reports the number of offers received, including lots that ended without an award. Of 114,995 such lots in division 33, 61.5% received exactly one offer. Among lots that were awarded (101,105), the share is 64.6%. That is far higher than in other supply categories in Poland over the same period: 35.0% for office and computing equipment, 26.9% for furniture and 20.5% for food.

Many lots attract only one bidder, which suggests limited competition for a given product line. But a single offer often reflects how the lot was written: a specification that matches one registered product, a framework already in place, or a supplier with the right product and the paperwork to bid on it. For a new entrant, a single-offer lot shows where competition is thin, not an open door.

Where foreign companies win directly

Direct foreign wins are rare and concentrated. Of the 1,413 awards to foreign-registered companies, by country:

Hungary's 808 awards are one company: AstraZeneca Kft., the group's regional entity. That single company accounts for more than half of all foreign-registered awards in the division. Germany has more winners, 20 companies, but only 297 awards between them. The next country, the Netherlands, has 13.

So direct wins from abroad are mostly one pharmaceutical group billing from a regional hub, plus a handful of specialised suppliers.

What this means for a manufacturer

The Polish hospital market is large in volume and closed in structure. Nearly every award goes to a Polish-registered company, and the most frequent winners we have researched are distributors or the local subsidiaries of global groups. The route in is usually through a Polish partner, and choosing the right one is the main decision. See our Poland market page, the medical supplies guide and our post on selling to Poland through a distributor.

In Cresques you create a market from a country and up to five CPV categories and see the companies that won public supply contracts in them, each linked to its notices. A full company profile (4 credits) shows every award with its buyer and date and researches what kind of company it is, distributor, manufacturer or a manufacturer's subsidiary, with quotes checked on its own pages. That last step matters in Poland: several of the most frequent winners are subsidiaries of manufacturers you may compete with.