Bayer (ETR:BAYN) is pumping cash into its operations in Turku, a city on the southwest coast of Finland. 

The company is at once modernizing its current operations there while also constructing a new pharmaceutical plant.  

Bayer notes that the new facility will make extensive use of automation and robotics. 

Bayer first built the existing Turku plant in the 1960s. 

In all, the company is investing some €250 million in its Turku operations. Bayer describes Turku as “the world’s contraceptive capital.”

In 2020, the company announced a €35 million investment in its Turku production supply center, which produces polymer-based contraceptive devices. 

According to Miriam Holstein, CEO of Bayer Nordic, the Turku plants will play a role in providing one hundred million women in developing countries with access to contraceptives by 2030.

The company aims to finish the construction of the new plant by 2025. 

Bayer notes that Turku is the company’s international center for producing polymer-based pharmaceuticals and long-acting contraceptives.

The company sells a range of contraceptives, including birth control pills and contraceptive devices. It stopped selling the Essure for female sterilization device on Dec. 31, 2018, after some women experienced severe side effects from the device.

The company is also partnering with the U.S. biotech Daré Bioscience to develop a silicone ring that releases ferrous gluconate to impede sperm motility.

Last year, Bayer announced that it had a 30-year-plan to expand a biologics facility in Berkeley, Calif. 

The plant makes anticoagulant drugs for people with hemophilia.