The Himalaya Drug Company is a leading multinational medicinal drugs company. It produces healthcare products under the name Himalaya Herbal Healthcare. It has grown multifold and is spread across locations in India and abroad. Today, the Himalaya brand is synonymous with safe and efficacious herbal products; their products are prescribed by 400,000 doctors worldwide, and millions of customers trust them for their health and personal care needs.
The challenge
Himalaya’s revamped factory in Bengaluru commenced operation in 2006 and is spread over 200 acres. The production block 2, raw material section comprises an area of approximately 13000 sq ft (PB2 RMS) where the herbal/ ayurvedic medicine in the form of granules/ powder or liquid is stored before taking it into production. This space was only ventilated and temperatures soared above 35ºC in summer. Generally, when the temperature crosses 30ºC, the raw material turns lumpy which then has to be rejected.
The solution
This is when the Himalaya management approached to HMX for their IDEC system. The requirement was that the temperature in any weather should not cross 30ºC. HMX then carried out a comprehensive heat load study and based on the calculated room sensible heat gain, assumed delta T of 5-6 Dec (difference between room temperature and grill temperature) it was estimated that 30000CFM of dual stage evaporative cooled air would be adequate for the worst condition to ensure that the space temperature does not cross 30ºC. This was rechecked with the ideal number of air changes and it was found to be in line with industry standards. Himalaya then invited HMX to supply two 15000CFM machines totaling to 30000CFM. Also Himalaya wanted to continue with the existing ducting as it was relatively new and changing the same would obstruct factory working. The HMX team then executed the project keeping the same ducting without any interference in factory working with successful air balancing.
The result
HMX Ambiator was commissioned in October 2013. Based on our data monitored, the temperatures have never crossed 28ºC since then. Earlier more than two tons out of a storage capacity of 20 tons base medicines were degraded and rejected which has now been totally eliminated.
In the words of Laxmipathy, Store Manager, “We are extremely satisfied with the performance of HMX units, earlier more than 10 per cent of material used to be rejected in the past due to temperature spikes, now due to control of temperature there is zero rejection.”