GREENE – Commerce Chenango’s 53rd annual dinner featured the presentation of two of the Chamber’s highest honors – the Distinguished Business of the Year and the Commitment to Community Award.

The 2012 Distinguished Business of the Year award went to CWS of Norwich, which has provided the community with 46 years of quality initiatives, product-line flexibility and consumer reliability. Chartered in 1964, CWS was originally established in Oxford, with a staff of one and a consumer roster of two. It is currently one of the largest contract packaging companies in the northeast, with over 275 employees serving the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, retail and organic markets. CWS customers include Coty, Bausch and Lomb, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble, Norwich Pharmaceuticals and the Raymond Corporation. The organization currently has five buildings with over 150,000 square feet of production space in and around Norwich.

In 1998, the CWS Charitable Foundation was established for the purpose of providing services to the Chenango County ARC to help people who are developmentally disabled, and emotionally and/or physically challenged. In 2001, the Foundation presented the first Wilson Harrison Scholarship to two graduating seniors in Chenango County who pursued a course of study in the human services field. This scholarship is awarded in memory of Wilson Harrison, who was a longtime board member of the Chenango County ARC.