Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles


Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles is a Spanish publicly listed company which manufactures railway vehicles and equipment and buses through its Solaris Bus & Coach subsidiary. It is based in Beasain, Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. Equipment manufactured by Grupo CAF includes light rail vehicles, rapid transit trains, railroad cars and locomotives, as well as variable gauge axles that can be fitted on any existing truck or bogie.
Over the 20 years from the early 1990s, CAF benefited from the rail investment boom in its home market in Spain to become a world player with a broad technical capability, able to manufacture almost any type of rail vehicle. CAF has supplied railway rolling stock to a number of major urban transit operators around Europe, the US, South America, East Asia, India, Australia and North Africa.

History

CAF was an acronym for the earlier name of Compañía Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, as well as for Construcciones y Auxiliar de Feres.

Fábrica de Hierros San Martín

In 1860, Domingo Goitia, Martín Usabiaga and José Francisco Arana established this company, whose main activity was puddling furnaces and cylinder rolling.

La Maquinista Guipuzcoana

In 1892, Francisco de Goitia joined the Marquess of Urquijo to set up La Maquinista Guipuzcoana, whose main activity was the operation of machinery and the forging and construction of railway rolling stock.
In 1898, it set up its plant in Beasain, Gipuzkoa. In 1901, Maquinista Guipuzcoana was taken over by La Sociedad Española de Construcciones Metálicas, which already owned 5 factories. In 1905 it changed its name to Fábrica de Vagones de Beasain.
Its consolidation took place during the years of the World War I thanks to the demand from the Belgian and French railways.

Compañía Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles

Compañía Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles was founded in 1917 for the construction, purchase, sale, or rental of railcars and other related items intended for the transportation and operation of railroads and trams, and specializing in freight car production and with a total of 1,600 employees. By 1925, once the war was ended, CAF bought back the Beasain plant.
In the 1940s, after the Spanish Civil War, a period during which the facilities were militarized, CAF began to expand by leasing workshops in Irún and Madrid. In 1947 it acquired part of the Sociedad de Material Móvil y Construcciones de Zaragoza.
Since 1958, the company has modernized and enlarged its Beasain plant and expanded its activity to include all kinds of rolling stock. In line with this, in 1969 CAF created its Research and Development Unit, which increased the company's competitiveness and intensified the focus on in-house technology.

Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles

In 1971, the existing Compañía Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles merged with Material Móvil y Construcciones and the company adopted its current name Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles.
Since the early 1990s, CAF has also been active internationally. In the early 2000s, CAF supplied high-speed trains to the Spanish RENFE and in 2005, high-speed trains were exported for the first time.
In 2018, CAF took over the Polish bus manufacturer Solaris. The company also acquired the Talent 3 platform from competitor Bombardier Transportation in 2022, as well as the Coradia Polyvalent platform and the plant in Reichshoffen from train manufacturer Alstom. This was a condition imposed by the European Commission's competition authority for the approval of the 2021 takeover of Bombardier Transportation by Alstom.

Subsidiaries

CAF U.S.A., a wholly owned subsidiary of CAF, was incorporated in 1998 and is based in Elmira, New York. It manufactures rolling stock for the North American market at a plant in Elmira that the company acquired from ADtranz in 2000. The company from Beasain continued its expansion during the third millennium.
On 24 May 2019, it announced the acquisition of the Swedish company Euromaint at a cost of circa €80 million, following other international contracts to supply Flemish and English railway and underground networks in 2017.
CAF Rolling Stock U.K. Ltd. is the CAF subsidiary in the United Kingdom. Its factory is based at Celtic Springs Business Park, at Llanwern steelworks near Newport, Wales as a result of an agreement made between CAF and the Welsh Government. The Newport factory has built stock for Transport for [Wales Rail|Transport for Wales], Arriva Rail North, the Docklands Light Railway, and potentially High Speed 2 if CAF win the bid process. They also donated £150,000 to the Conservative Party.
CAF Signalling was fined in 2021 with 1.7 million euros by the Spanish commission on markets and competition because of its participation in a cartel with other 7 international companies which colluded in tenders over Spanish rail infrastructure.

Political activity

During the 2019 United Kingdom general election, CAF Rail UK Limited made a donation of £50,000 to the Conservative Party.

United Nations blacklisting

In 2019, CAF was referred to Spain's OECD National Contact Point for a violation of the OECD [Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct]. As part of the 'TransJerusalem J-Net' consortium with Israeli company Shapir Engineering and Industry, who are on the United Nations Human Rights Council list of companies that benefit from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, CAF won a tender by the Israeli Ministry of Transport and Road Safety to supply railway equipment and to build, extend and operate light rail lines from Jerusalem to nearby Israeli settlements within the West Bank.
In 2025, reports by Amnesty International and United Nations rapporteur Francesca Albanese condemned CAF's involvement in the Jerusalem Light Rail project. In October 2025, CAF was formally listed by the Office of [the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights] as being a company conducting business in Israeli settlements within the occupied Palestinian territories.

Rolling stock

Carriages

EMU and DMU

For FEVE, now part of Renfe Operadora:
For Euskotren:
For Serveis Ferroviaris de Mallorca:
  • DMU Class 61
  • EMU Class 71
  • EMU Class 81
For other operators:
For Madrid:
  • Class 300
  • Class 1000
  • Class 2000
  • Class 3000
  • Class 5000
  • Class 6000
  • Class 8000
  • Class 8400
For Barcelona:
CAF Rolling Stock U.K. Ltd announced in 2017 its UK factory location was selected as Celtic Business Park at Llanwern steelworks in Newport, Wales. It has at least five confirmed UK projects from 2019 onwards and would have been the construction site for their unsuccessful bid to deliver stock for High Speed 2. The site was funded with support from the Welsh Government Inward Investment Programme.