Sorefame

Sorefame ( portmanteau word for Sociedad Reunidas de Fabricações Metálicas ) was a Portuguese company for the manufacture of railway vehicles and hydro technology so dam gates. The company founded in 1943, was split in 1990 and closed by parent company Bombardier Transportation in 2005.

History

Sorefame was founded in 1943 and was active in two product segments, on the one hand the production of railway vehicles, on the other hand, in the field of hydro technology. 1990 Sorefame was merged together with SMM, Mague and SEPSA Grupo Senete, the Swiss-Swedish technology group Asea Brown Boveri was a 40% interest in the capital of Grupo Senete. In the 1970s Sorefame had reached with 4100 employees, the peak in the number of employees. In 1990 the company was split: the field of railway construction was named Sorefame, the field of hydro technology has been incorporated under the name of Hidro - Sorefame to the Business of ABB -hydro, which spun off into a joint venture with Alstom in 1997 and completely taken over by this so that the former Hidro - Sorefame today is part of Alstom. The railway sector in 1996 was part of the ABB / Daimler -Benz joint venture Adtranz, which was acquired in 2001 by the Canadian company Bombardier Transportation. Due to a Europe-wide restructuring, fell victim to the plants in Germany and the former Adtranz factory in the Swiss Pratteln, Bombardier and former Sorefame factory in Amadora was closed.

Product spectrum

The product range of car and locomotive factory Sorefame covers almost the entire fleet of Comboios de Portugal. Especially at times of the Estado Novo in the Salazar dictatorship was Sorefame the preferred supplier of the CP, after the Carnation Revolution in 1974 but continued liberalization of the market, so that is Sorefame focused on the licensed production. Thus, the CP series 1900 1981 was modeled by Alstom. Today, still in use are the the Corail car design SNCF modeled Intercidades cars and the Alfa pendular which 480 FS / Trenitalia were manufactured under license from Fiat Ferroviaria modeled after the ETR 460/ETR. The 1991 vehicles ordered from Siemens for the Linha de Sintra were built in Amadora. Furthermore, the Sorefame also built low-floor vehicles for the Carris, which are used on the network of tram Lisbon.

Works premises

Located near the train station Reboleira work was handed over to the further use after the closure in 2005 by Bombardier. For seven million euros, the infrastructure company REFER took a little less than half of the area to use for ground- oriented training. In 2008, the site passed to the CP- daughter EMEF which performs maintenance and refurbishment work here. In addition, the EMEF dislocated the headquarters of Lisbon Amadora, where now the Service Centrale and Marketing Directorate are. The rest of the site is used by the glass container manufacturer Sotancro.