Providers have been feeling increasingly optimistic about Sweden’s for-profit nursing home market since its elections swung the country to the right in September. Demographic changes – Sweden is currently welcoming a wave of baby boomers into care – mean Sweden has had to be lenient on a private sector shouldering the burden of building new, much-needed capacity.

Ambea, Sweden’s third-largest nursing home operator, tells us it has a pipeline of 2,000 beds. Prior to the election, regulators acknowledged a need to increase productivity – it is now possible to care for an extra resident with the same number of staff for each ‘department’ (Swedish nursing homes typically have six to eight ‘departments’ of ten beds). It is a market in which we expect to see strong growth, as operators ramp up new builds to reach a sweet point of 120,000 beds.