Multi-Stop Goods Lift for Pharma Warehouse in Ranjangaon MIDC
⚠ The Challenge
The client operates a 3-storey pharmaceutical manufacturing and packaging facility in Ranjangaon MIDC, one of Pune's largest industrial zones for pharma production. Raw materials, intermediate products and finished cartons needed to move between the ground-floor warehouse, first-floor manufacturing area and second-floor packaging hall. Their existing chain-pulley hoist was slow, required 3 operators per shift and created contamination risks — loose chain lubricant particles and rust flakes were repeatedly flagged in internal quality audits. With an upcoming FDA inspection, the client needed a GMP-compliant goods lift that could handle 3-tonne pallet loads in a clean, controlled environment.
✔ Our Solution
Nio Equipment designed a hydraulic goods lift with 3-tonne capacity, 9-metre travel height and 3 landing stops, custom-engineered for pharmaceutical GMP requirements. The platform and shaft interior were clad in SS304 stainless steel with smooth welded joints. The hydraulic power unit was mounted externally to keep the shaft free of oil mist. Interlocked SS landing doors with flush handles, IP65-rated control panels and an epoxy-coated pit ensured the installation met clean-room adjacency standards. A UPS-backed emergency lowering system was included to protect temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical intermediates during power failures.
Key Results
The Challenge
Ranjangaon MIDC, located about 50 km east of Pune on the Pune-Nagar highway, is home to over 200 pharmaceutical, automotive and engineering companies. This particular client is a mid-sized contract manufacturer producing oral solid dosage forms for domestic and export markets. Their 3-storey facility handles a daily throughput of 8-10 tonnes of raw materials, intermediates and finished goods moving between floors.
The existing chain-pulley hoist was installed during the factory's original construction 12 years ago. It was slow — each load cycle took 8-10 minutes including manual loading, hoisting and unloading. More critically, the hoist's open-chain mechanism shed lubricant particles and rust flakes into the shaft area, which was adjacent to a controlled manufacturing corridor. Internal quality audits flagged particulate contamination near the hoist shaft 3-4 times per quarter, requiring costly cleaning and re-validation cycles.
With an FDA inspection scheduled within 6 months, the plant head needed a clean, GMP-compliant vertical transport solution that eliminated contamination risk while doubling throughput capacity. The new system had to fit within the existing shaft opening and operate reliably on Ranjangaon's occasionally unstable power grid.
Our Solution
Nio Equipment proposed a fully enclosed hydraulic goods lift with SS304 stainless steel shaft cladding — the same grade used in pharma clean rooms. Unlike chain hoists or traction lifts, a hydraulic system keeps the power unit outside the shaft, eliminating oil mist and mechanical particle generation in the load-carrying zone.
Key design features included: a 2.5m × 2m platform sized for standard pharma pallets and trolleys, flush-mounted SS landing doors with electro-mechanical interlocks, IP65-rated control panels to withstand wash-down cleaning, and smooth internal surfaces with welded joints (no exposed fasteners). The pit was lined with chemical-resistant epoxy coating for easy cleaning.
Given Ranjangaon MIDC's power grid challenges — the area experiences 4-6 unscheduled outages per month during monsoon — Nio Equipment integrated a UPS-backed emergency lowering system. During power failure, the lift automatically descends to the nearest landing within 90 seconds, allowing operators to remove temperature-sensitive materials before they exceed hold-time limits.
Installation at Ranjangaon MIDC
The installation was completed in 5 weeks during a planned annual shutdown. Nio Equipment's team worked with the client's engineering department to modify the existing shaft opening — widening it by 200mm on one side to accommodate the stainless steel cladding thickness. Civil work (pit deepening and shaft modification) took 10 days, followed by mechanical installation, electrical commissioning and load testing.
Being based in Bhosari MIDC — just 40 minutes from Ranjangaon — Nio Equipment's project team conducted daily site visits during installation without travel overhead. This proximity also means the client gets same-day service response for any future maintenance needs, a significant advantage for pharma operations where equipment downtime directly impacts batch schedules.
Results and Impact
Inter-floor transfer time dropped from 8-10 minutes to 3-4 minutes per cycle — a 50% improvement that eliminated the material-transfer bottleneck during peak production. The SS-clad enclosed shaft completely eliminated particulate contamination near the transport zone. In the 6 months since installation, the client has recorded zero contamination flags near the goods lift area, compared to 3-4 per quarter previously.
The FDA inspection, conducted 4 months after installation, cleared on first attempt. The auditor specifically noted the goods lift upgrade as a positive infrastructure investment in the audit report. The client achieved full ROI within 11 months, driven by labour savings (3 hoist operators redeployed), elimination of quality-deviation investigation costs and reduced batch-hold incidents.
“We needed a goods lift that wouldn't just move materials but would meet pharmaceutical cleanliness standards. Nio Equipment understood our GMP requirements from the first site visit. The SS-clad lift passed FDA audit without a single observation — that alone justified the investment.”— Plant Head, Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, Ranjangaon MIDC