British health and beauty group looking for Swedish entrepreneurs to run pharmacies under the Boots brand.

• 'Don’t touch the pharmacies'

British health and beauty group Alliance Boots and Swedish Farmacevtföretagarna has finalised an agreement for a joint business venture in the Swedish pharmacy market and plan to open 100 new pharmacies in the Scandinavian country.

The Swedish pharmacy market -- that January 1 was opened for competition after 30 years of monopoly -- is currently worth about 30 billion kronor ($3.75 billion).

“Alliance Boots’ aim is to launch Boots as a strong and trusted pharmacy brand in Sweden, whilst continually seeking ways to offer innovative products and services to patients and consumers”, Ornella Barra, Chief Executive of Alliance Boots' Pharmaceutical Wholesale Division, said.

The first pharmacies are planned to open this autumn under the brand Boots. The goal is to create a nationwide chain of pharmacies, owned and operated by individual pharmacy entrepreneurs.

“The response from the entrepreneurs has been tremendous. Currently more than 100 entrepreneurs want to start a Boots branded pharmacy and some of them have already made good progress, which means we’ll be able to get off to a quick start,” says Lennart Axelsson, chief executive officer of Farmacevtföretagarna, an organisation formed by the Swedish Pharmaceutical Association to ensure a innovative small business approach in a reregulated pharmacy market.

The first pharmacy should be able to open later this year, he added.

The state-owned Apoteket chain of pharmacies was until January the sole provider of prescription medication in Sweden, and was until November 2009 also the only provider of non-prescription drugs such as headache tablets or other over-the-counter products.

Last year the Swedish state sold 465 of its estimated 900 state-owned Apoteket stores to four firms, all of them Swedish companies established for the sole purpose of running the pharmacies.

In January Swedish Health and Social Affairs minister Göran Hägglund inaugurated the country's first private pharmacy since 1971.