We’re excited to announce that we’re going international for the first time, with the launch of Exposed™: The Japanese Knotweed Heatmap in Sweden.

We are regularly contacted by Swedish people who have come into contact with Japanese knotweed, or “parkslide” as it’s known there, but find there is very little accurate information, advice or professional help available locally to deal with it.

Our first step is to establish the distribution of the plant across the country, and we know from our 20+ years’ experience here that Exposed is a fantastic way of building a national picture of the problem. Since its launch in the UK in 2019 over 52,000 sightings have been added and over 100,000 postcode searches completed, often by home buyers and their solicitors to assess the risk posed during property transactions.

Sweden seems to be less severely affected than the UK, but anecdotal evidence suggests a worrying trend of accelerated spread, exacerbated by recent mild winters. This is aided by the fact that there are currently no laws or regulations there to prevent the spread of knotweed – and no restrictions by mortgage lenders on the sale of affected property, leaving buyers exposed.

We hope the launch of Exposed will mark the beginning of the fightback against parkslide in Sweden.