Materfer

Materfer (an acronym for Material Ferroviario S.A.) is an Argentine manufacturer of railway and road vehicles, located in the city of Ferreyra in Córdoba Province. The company was established by Fiat Concord in the late 1950s, being its subsidiary until 1980 when Sevel Argentina took over Fiat vehicles. Materfer has built several types of rolling stock in its history, such as diesel locomotives, coaches and trams, most of them for the state-owned company Ferrocarriles Argentinos which operated trains within Argentina from 1948 to 1991. The company has also exported its products to Cuba, Bolivia, Uruguay and Chile. Materfer owns a 66,000-square-metre (710,000 sq ft) factory with 200 machines, mainly electrofusion, folding, sheet metal cutters and overhead crane machines. In the 1980s Materfer employed 2,500 people, mainly in the manufacture of diesel locomotives, coaches and railcars for the Argentine and international markets. The factory produced about one coach per day. Materfer has also produced combine harvesters under the brand "Maraní Agrinar". Nowadays the company has 400 employees working at its factory in Ferreyra.