Nimbasia Stabilizers manufactures multiple chemicals including metallic stearates – a chemical widely used as a functional additive across growing Indian industries like pharmaceuticals, plastics, and rubber. With its focus on zero-defect production while catering to both domestic and international demands, Nimbasia’s plant runs nearly round-the-clock and for the western India-based manufacturer, every hour of production counts.
However, the manufacturing of chemicals like metallic stearates typically involves harsh operating conditions. For instance, processes like drying, grinding, and conveying can be highly dusty. These fine particles can settle on variable frequency drives (VFDs), interfering with cooling and electronics over time. Due to this, Nimbasia’s traditional drive system faced failures resulting in unexpected downtime.
To counter this challenge and ensure high productivity and uptime, Nimbasia installed ABB’s ACS580 packaged drive to run multiple applications including its mixers, grinding mills and blowers. Packaged drive is a plug-and-play drive solution with integrated disconnect switch and protective fuses, ensuring safe shutdown during maintenance and built-in protection against electrical faults.
The drive comes with an IP55 enclosure, ideal for protection against dust, moisture and other harsh environments while ensuring smooth processes by reducing downtime and maximizing performance. With this upgrade, Nimbasia’s plant is running continuously without a single drive failure since installation in January 2024, enabling significant cost savings and achieving a return on investment in under three months.
“At Nimbasia, we commit to manufacturing excellent products by continuously improving our process. ABB’s drives enabled us to run longer, operate cleaner, and deliver better, all in line with our vision for sustainable, high-quality manufacturing,” said Ravishu Mittal, Partner, Nimbasia.
Small footprint, big difference
Conventional IP55 drive panels are bulky and space-consuming and due to this, they are often located away from the actual motor or application requiring additional protection, which in turn can translate to longer cables, more space requirement, and higher costs. Enabling operational efficiency and designed to tackle such practical challenges, ABB’s packaged drives are extremely compact with all essential features built in and reliable with panel-less IP55 class installation.
Since all the essential components for the drive system are built in, the footprint of the drive is significantly smaller, compared to a similar power rating drive in a cabinet. This solution also helped Nimbasia reduce the drive set up and installation time and enabled minimal wiring, allowing the placement of the drive closer to the applications while complying to Indian regulations.
“In industries where operating in harsh conditions is a constant and plants need to run round the clock; reliability is not optional – it is mission-critical. Our value-added offering of drives is designed to operate in the toughest conditions and undergo rigorous testing to ensure they meet the industrial needs and counter practical challenges,” said AR Madhusudan, Business Line Manager, Drive Products, ABB India.
In line with Nimbasia’s focus on high quality, ABB drives are playing a critical role in ensuring the efficient and controlled operation of its applications, helping optimize energy use, protecting equipment, and enabling safety and precise process control across each stage of production.
