AMBIT Projects

Focus on the Customer

Ambit Projects Ltd., based in the English town of King‘s Lynn, has been designing and manufacturing custom machinery for cleaning, processing, and packaging of agricultural products for over 25 years. Based on food-grade materials, such equipment is engineered with a focus on low-maintenance designs as well as high energy efficiency and environmental friendliness.

Focus on the Project

For use in a food processing system, NORD supplied corrosion-resistant drive solutions combining smooth-surface motors and SMI worm gearboxes to the British OEM Ambit Projects.

Project Challenge

One of Europe‘s leading fresh produce growers is a long-time customer of Ambit Projects, a British OEM. The end customer required a major upgrade and line expansion of a vegetable trimming and packaging machine. The machine removes undesirable plant parts such as roots and then washes, inspects, and packages the produce.

Aggressive atmosphere. – Incessantly exposed to this humid environment as well as to regular washdown with water and foaming agents, conventional drives had been prone to suffer. Even a high-specification anti-corrosion coating had not proven enough to provide lasting protection. The paint on the existing drives had cracked and threatened to peel off. As a result, shielded protection was required in order to prevent contamination of foodstuffs. Worst affected were the drives on the belt conveyor in close proximity to the washing process that rinses off soil and stones under high pressure.

Integrated protection required. – The OEM eventually looked for more suitable belt conveyor and other drives, notably ones that would not require additional shielding, but come with built-in corrosion protection. With such new drive solutions, Ambit Projects were hoping to dramatically reduce their own as well as their end customer‘s maintenance effort and expenses. Though corrosion protection was a chief concern, of course, any new drive products also had to meet the food industry’s hygienic requirements and withstand disinfectants and cleaning agents.