Integral Coach Factory

Integral Coach Factory (ICF) is the only manufacturer of rail coaches located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. It was established in 1952, is owned and operated by the Indian Railways. The coach factory primarily manufactures bullock for Indian Railways but also exports railway coaches to other countries parra.

Integral coach factory was established in 1952 and started production on 2 October 1955. The first items produced were third class shells for Southern Railway.

The Integral Coach Factory consists of two main divisions - shell division and furnishing division. The shell division manufactures the skeleton of the rail coach, while the furnishing division is concerned with the coach interiors and amenities. An ancillary unit to the Integral Coach Factory is being built in Haldia, West Bengal for furnishing diesel multiple units. ICF manufactures more than 170 varieties of coach including first and second class coaches, pantry and kitchen cars, luggage and brake vans, self-propelled coaches, electric (EMU), diesel (DMU) and mainline electric multiple units (MEMU), metro coaches and diesel electric tower cars, accident relief medical vans (ARMV), inspection cars (RA), fuel test cars, track recording cars and luxury coaches. The plant employs about 13,000 people and manufactures about 1500 coaches per year. ICF churned out 1,503 coaches in 2010 and in August 2011, ICF was sanctioned a project for manufacturing stainless steel shells and high speed bogies and an increase in capacity from 1,500 to 1,700 coaches. In 2013-14, it built 25 LHB Coaches, 248 air-conditioned and 1185 non-ac coaches. It plans to increase its manufacturing capacity of LHB coaches. It has set a target to manufacture 300 LHB coaches in 2014-15 and reach a capacity of 1000 LHB coaches by 2016-17. A total of 50,000 coaches had been produced till 18 Aug 2015 by ICF since its inception.

ICF also exports rail cars to other countries including Thailand, Burma, Taiwan, Zambia, Philippines, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam, Nigeria, Mozambique, Bangladesh, Angola and Sri Lanka.

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