FAMAE - Fabricas y Maestranzas del Ejercito

FAMAE traces itself to October 1811, when Chile's national congress ordered a workshop set up to make and repair the patriot army's weapons, which makes it one of the oldest arms manufacturers in the Americas. A 1953 decree gave it its present shape as a state owned corporation with its own legal personality and autonomous management, reporting to the Ministry of National Defence and supervised by a superior council chaired by serving army officers. Ownership is wholly public. Around 660 people work for it, and after 120 years on Avenida Pedro Montt in Santiago the industrial operation moved to Talagante in 2002, with administration remaining in the capital.

Weapons manufacture is the historic core. FAMAE has built SIG rifles under licence since the 1980s and still lists the SG 540-1M in 5.56 and the SG 542-1M in 7.62 as production items, with fixed or folding stocks and Picatinny interfaces. The SAF submachine gun family in 9x19 is its own design and runs from the full size weapon through the Mini SAF and a suppressed version to the SAF 200. More recent are the pistols. The Volcano-F, a steel framed 9mm on sale since 2022, is joined by the polymer framed Tornado-F and the compact F1811.

Ammunition is the volume business and has just been rebuilt. The munitions plant finished a modernisation in 2024 with a new automated line added to equipment bought in 2022, roughly doubling capacity from about ten million rounds a year. Production covers 5.56x45, 7.62x51, .308 Winchester, 9x19, .380 and .40 S&W, together with 81mm and 120mm mortar bombs and the Shield less lethal and practice cartridges for 12 gauge shotguns. Exports have followed, including a 5.56 supply contract to an American company.

The maintenance side has become the part the army leans on hardest. Industrial maintenance centres at Talagante, Antofagasta, Arica, Pozo Almonte, Victoria and Punta Arenas overhaul tracked and wheeled armour, taking in Leopard 2A4 tanks, M109 self propelled howitzers, M113 carriers and Piranha wheeled vehicles, replacing and refurbishing powerpack components and modifying vehicles to raise performance. A separate electronics, optics and telecommunications centre repairs night vision monoculars, binoculars, weapon sights and vehicle mounted thermal cameras under scheduled and restorative maintenance regimes. Newer work runs through the subsidiary S2T, which developed the Ragnar fire control system now used with M109 howitzers, the SIG LEIF geolocation aid, the Remora sensor monitoring system and the Seeker 1 portable harness test bench, alongside virtual firing ranges delivered to army units. Two things shape the business. It is small by international standards, with a headcount and turnover closer to a regional supplier than to a national champion, and its captive customer is the Chilean Army, which buys most of what it makes. Exports reach a handful of countries including Argentina, Brazil and the United States, and the state enterprise system publishes its accounts and board membership in full.