A multi-year transformation took ELCG from a travel-focused business into a diversified preventative healthcare platform across Northern Europe. The journey saw vaccinations soar 14x and headcount 6x during its partnership with Inflexion.
What started as a Danish vaccination service has over the years grown into one of Europe’s largest independent providers with 3 million vaccinations delivered in 2024 – and a strong presence across Denmark, the UK, the Netherlands and most recently Sweden. In 2024 alone, European LifeCare Group (ELCG) doubled both revenue and EBITDA.
Its success was the result of careful planning as well as agile manoeuvring, supported by Inflexion since 2018. At that point the company operated clinics in Denmark and the UK, primarily focused on travel and flu vaccinations. The original thesis was a classic buy-and-build, and within the first 16 months of ownership, ELCG had completed two acquisitions and secured new financing to support further expansion.
But when COVID-19 hit, the core travel market effectively shut down. Rather than wait it out, ELCG pivoted its nurse-led clinic network towards COVID testing and, later, vaccination services, helping to minimise the impact of lockdowns and keep the business trading.
Rather than a return to “business as usual” as travel returned, the business embarked on a deliberate pivot to broader preventative healthcare. ELCG had already begun to build out health vaccinations alongside travel, as well as supporting vaccine clinical trials. Tanja Sølvkjær, appointed as CEO in late 2023 worked with the board to double down on that direction.
Across the Group, the mix is now approximately half travel and half general health vaccinations, with a similar 50:50 balance between private out-of-pocket customers and larger contracts with public bodies and corporates.
Growing simply and sustainably
The strategy has been to keep the clinical model simple, but to broaden who ELCG serves. “We’ve kept the operating model simple and scaled it,” Tanja says, explaining that it’s a nurse-led model with sales points.
To execute this shift to preventative healthcare, the talent bench was reshaped and built out. In addition to Tanja, appointments included a new Chair with deep experience in consumer health and digital, a new CFO, and later a Chief Marketing Officer and Chief People Officer.
“We needed to bring in new profiles for the important posts where we had to make changes,” Tanja recalls. At the same time, corporate functions and processes were professionalised – particularly IT, cyber security, finance and marketing – underpinned by a new KPI framework to improve the team’s performance data.
On the commercial side, ELCG leaned into its strengths in direct-to-consumer marketing and long-standing relationships with public health systems. Inflexion’s Digital team worked closely with the business on digital marketing, helping to drive organic growth in both existing and newly acquired clinics. Seasonality and earnings quality were improved by adding new revenue streams. In addition to its public and private vaccination services, ELCG now supports clinical trials for major pharmaceutical companies such as Sanofi and Pfizer and has built a growing corporate vaccination offering. These newer services accounted for around a significant share of FY24 revenue, with further growth anticipated.
A simple operating model delivered well makes it easier to establish a reputation for reliability and thus generate profits.
An example of this in action is its role as operations partner in Pfizer’s large RSV vaccine trial in Denmark. “Our standardised operating model allowed us to ramp up at remarkable speed with just 10 days’ notice: we signed a contract and vaccinated 65,000 people in the following six weeks,” Tanja recalls.
The international build-out unlocked new growth and proved that ELCG’s operating model was genuinely scalable. As Tanja puts it, “When going into a country that you’re not that familiar with and achieving this level of growth, it makes it a lot easier to believe that then you can go into another country after that and roll out a model. It shows that the management team is ready for this scale.”
Under Inflexion’s ownership, the Group completed four acquisitions and expanded into the Benelux and Swedish markets, increasing its clinic count by 65%, growing headcount six-fold and driving annual vaccinations 14x to over 3 million.
The route into both new markets followed the same template: acquire a small, high-quality platform and then scale from there. “I would always prefer to go in with a relatively small acquisition to establish a footprint and then grow based on that,” Tanja explains. The Netherlands was selected because its travel vaccination market resembled Denmark and the UK, but was still relatively unconsolidated, creating an opportunity to apply ELCG’s marketing strengths. Sweden followed a similar logic, with two clinics providing the initial base for further greenfield expansion.
Tanja describes the partnership as “hands-on and pragmatic, transparent about where we stood, what the challenges were, how to address them, and how to prioritise.” She says ELCG got support when needed, with Inflexion’s sector and functional specialists helping on topics ranging from cyber and IT resilience to financial positioning, media and adviser selection. “There were people pulled in that could support and help us on the positioning,” whether that meant recommending trusted external advisers or providing interim talent from the wider Inflexion network.
From travel vaccines to preventative care
ELCG’s journey saw it grow into a pan-European preventative healthcare platform with a diversified revenue base and clear evidence that its nurse-led model could be replicated beyond its home markets. It was sold to a European private equity group in 2025.
Tanja remains with the business and sees significant runway in its current footprint as ELCG stays true to its mission. The immediate priority is depth rather than breadth: building scale and share in the Netherlands and Sweden, as well as continuing to grow in Denmark and the UK, before considering further European entries. What will not change is the core mission. Their latest work with Pfizer may help to make a case for public vaccinations (against RSV) as they show that preventative healthcare can support budgets under strain – helping quality of life as well as finances.
