The company was created in 1941, under Argentine law 12.709, in order to expand the
Argentine defense industry to compensate for the shortfall of imports that came about during the
Second World War. In its early years, it produced primarily small arms and
munitions whilst aiding in the development of other key industries in the country. The company expanded quickly and would eventually have 14 factories around the country. However, starting in the 1980s, many of these plants were sold to private firms. The company has a long history of producing rolling stock for the
Argentine railways. It has produced trams, urban commuter rail trains, and trains for the
Buenos Aires Underground. In more recent years, the company has begun to grow again, acquiring new factories and expanding into more areas outside the
arms industry. This includes the production of rolling stock for the state-owned rail operator
Ferrocarriles Argentinos's freight division
Trenes Argentinos Cargas y Logística, which ordered over 1,500 carriages in the mid-2010s. The wagons were produced in FM's factory in
Río Tercero, Córdoba and each one has a capacity for 45 tons of grains. It is expected that the factory will manufacture 3 wagons per day, to be used in the three lines operated by the National Government, the
San Martín,
Belgrano and
Urquiza. Other types of
freight wagons to be produced by FM are
flat,
spine and
tank cars. After World War II, Fabricaciones Militares began recruiting foreign specialists, including a group of highly qualified Polish engineers. The most numerous group consisted of Polish technicians contracted by Fabricaciones Militares, led by engineer
Witold Wierzejski, who had previously served as General Director of Armaments Manufacturing in Poland and later worked in France and the United Kingdom. After the war, he was hired by the Argentine Ministry of War to oversee modernization of the arms industry. Wierzejski, one of the
Polish engineers in Argentina, also became the first president of the
Polish Engineers and Technicians Center in Buenos Aires and helped launch a multilingual technical journal published by the Center. Other Polish specialists recruited to Fabricaciones Militares included
Alejandro Stulgiński, a professor of machine elements and materials resistance, who also taught metrology and authored a textbook based on his many years of academic work. == Military production ==