About

Merck, a leading science and technology company, operates across life science, healthcare and electronics. More than 62,000 employees work to make a positive difference to millions of people’s lives every day by creating more joyful and sustainable ways to live. From providing products and services that accelerate drug development and manufacturing, to discovering unique ways to treat the most challenging diseases to enabling the intelligence of devices, the company is everywhere. Founded in 1668, Merck is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed company.

Awards

Fenil-sur-Corsier, CH - Lighthouse award in Customer Centricity

Jun 2026

This biologics development centre makes early-phase clinical drug substance for a pipeline of diverse therapeutic proteins, where each batch is effectively a new process and speed to the clinic decides whether a candidate reaches patients. Traditional batch processing demanded a large plant footprint, heavy capital outlay and long technology-transfer cycles, and it could not flex across the growing variety of complex modalities. The site rebuilt itself around continuous processing - perfusion cell culture, in-line buffer formulation and a compact single-use purification skid - and unified six dispersed development, quality-control and clinical-manufacturing functions under one digitalised, robotised roof. It paired that physical change with a paperless plant, connected laboratories and a cloud data layer, and reskilled 265 people into continuous processing and digital ways of working. Cost of goods fell by about 88%, bioreactor productivity rose roughly eight-fold, laboratory labour productivity rose 67%, and speed to patient — the time to first clinical material — was cut by half.