Bayer’s major investment strengthens Turku’s position as a national hub for pharmaceutical development
City of Turku is very satisfied with Bayer’s major investment in the production facility in Turku. Bayer shall invest EUR 250 million in Turku, making this investment one of the largest ones in Finland in recent years.
– This investment will further strengthen Turku’s position as a hub for pharmaceutical develop-ment and production in Finland. We can now comfortably say that our city will also become a top-tier city among international world-class pharmaceutical industry, says Niko Kyynäräinen, director of economic power in Turku.
Bayer will build a new pharmaceutical factory in Turku, and at the same time the company will modernise their existing production facility. The new production facility will belong to the group of most modern pharmaceutical factories in which automation and robotics shall be utilised ex-tensively. The new plant will be built within an existing building in Artukainen, where Bayer al-ready has operations.
This investment is significant for the whole of Finland and Turku region. In Finland, Bayer em-ploys over 1,000 people, most of whom work in Turku.
With this investment and growing demand announced by Bayer, the company will also need highly skilled workforce in Turku in the coming years. The city will support availability and sourcing of labour in all possible ways.
– The diverse economic structure in the Turku region combined with strong co-operation in teaching and research on our various campuses support long-term development, and Turku is certainly committed to this co-operation, says Niko Kyynäräinen, director of economic power.
Bayer themselves tells that the investment strengthens Bayer’s footprint in Finland and also the role of Turku as the world’s capital of contraceptive products.
– We are proud of Bayer’s long-term commitment to Turku and the company’s responsible strat-egy to offer 100 million women in developing countries the opportunity for modern contraception and family planning, says Niko Kyynäräinen, director of vitality at City of Turku.
According to Bayer, Turku plays an important role in Bayer’s global strategy for sustainable de-velopment, which is in line with the UN’s goals of sustainable development. According to Bayer, this investment promotes measures supporting gender equality and family planning, which have been the focus at the Turku plant for 30 years now.
The operating conditions for the pharmaceutical product development sector have been pro-moted systematically in Turku for several years, and pharmaceutical product development car-ried out in Turku is certainly known globally. Almost 75% of Finnish pharmaceutical exports are generated by companies operating in the Turku region. Roughly half of the companies in the Finnish pharmaceutical and diagnostic sectors are located in the Turku region. Over 1,000 re-searchers in more than 100 Health Campus Turku research groups serve as the basic structure for the innovation ecosystem by the name of HealthTurku.
In the 1970s, Turku was also the initiator of Finnish development of original medicines.
In Finland, a total of 22 medicines have been developed for the marketplace, 21 of which have been developed by companies that have a product development facility in Turku. Pharmaceuti-cal product development and diagnostics are also strategic priorities for Turku University and Åbo Akademi University.
The development of the pharmaceutical industry, diagnostics and health technology is supported by multi-disciplinary regional co-operation, which is accelerated by the regional development company called Turku Science Park Oy.The company is also engaged in active marketing to attract important new in-vestments to Turku.