ABB wins gearless mill drive order from Indian cement manufacturer

Baden, Switzerland, November 12, 2009 – ABB, the leading power and automation technology group, announces that it has won an order for the first gearless mill drive (GMD) system ever to be installed in an Indian manufacturing plant. The order was placed at the end of October, by the Indian cement manufacturer Lalitha Cement Ltd. (LCL), located in Hyderabad, the capital of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

The GMD system will power a 4.8 MW, 15 feet cement mill at Lalitha Cement’s greenfield plant, which will have a capacity of one million tons of clinker per annum. Once the mill is in operation, it will deliver a daily output of 3’600 tons of cement.

As a variable speed drive, the GMD allows the mill to start smoothly, without any mechanical stress, and fulfills the customer’s requirements for flexibility and adjustability of the process, enabling maximum control over the grinding process. Furthermore, ABB gearless mill drive systems feature several benefits when compared with conventional geared drive systems: superior reliability, availability, extended life span and improved energy efficiency. ABB delivered the world’s first gearless machine drive in 1969, which is still operating at the Ciment Lamberg-Lafarge cement plant in Le Havre, France.

ABB’s scope of supply includes a complete GMD system with a 4.8 MW ringmotor, a cycloconverter, a converter transformer as well as an excitation converter. The ringmotor will be the first one to be produced in ABB’s planned new manufacturing facility in Basel, Switzerland.

The equipment will be delivered by the end of the year 2010, start-up of the GMD system is scheduled for March 2011.

ABB (www.abb.com) is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve their performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 120,000 people.