Merck, the pharmaceutical manufacturer, has named Keller Crescent a 2010 Supplier of the Year for its plant in Las Piedras, Puerto Rico. Keller Crescent, which has a plant in Vega Alta, PR, has a long-standing relationship with Merck for the production of folding cartons and other products.

“The 2010 merger of pharmaceutical giants Merck and Schering Pharmaceutical guided Keller Crescent’s Vega Alta operational team toward making quality and service requirements the primary drivers of the Merck-Schering transition,” says Jose Villafane, VP of operations for the Keller Crescent plant. “The Supplier of the Year Award is a credit to the hard work of the Keller Crescent cross-functional team and the entire staff.”

Over the years, Keller Crescent’s Vega Alta location has provided Merck with technical design support for labels, folding cartons, and other packaging applications. In 2010, Keller Crescent’s technical team developed and refined several new projects for drugs for Merck.

Keller Crescent supplies secondary packaging products in North America for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, supplying printed pharmaceutical folding cartons, inserts and outserts, pharmaceutical labels, patient booklets, IV hanger labels, and several patented specialty products, including the latest in track-and-trace and e-pedigree technologies.

Keller Crescent is part of the Clondalkin Group, an internationally diversified specialist packaging group with more than 40 separate manufacturing locations throughout North America and in 10 European countries, and annual sales in excess of $1.2 billion.