IFE based in Kematen/Ybbs celebrates its 75th anniversary
For 75 years, safety and reliability as well as quality and economy have been the top priorities for IFE. Founded in 1947 as an institute for technical research and development in Vienna, IFE managed to rise from a medium-sized company to become a world market leader.
Initially founded as an engineering office for development and construction orders in the field of vehi-cle technology, the manufacture of own products, which were sold under the brand name IFE, quickly followed. Due to the expansion of the product range to include vehicle superstructures and doors for rail and road vehicles as well as vibration conveyors for bulk goods transport, IFE moved to Waidhofen/Ybbs in December 1965 for reasons of space.
In 1986 IFE went public and in 1997 Knorr- Bremse SfS GmbH, Munich, began to acquire shares. In 2002, it was fully incorporated into the global Knorr-Bremse Group, the world market leader for rail vehicle systems.
Since 2001, the subsidiary IFE-CR in Modrice near Brno in the Czech Republic, which today is the world's largest production facility for rail vehicle doors, has made a decisive contribution to maintain-ing competitiveness. Plants in China, North America and India and an extensive service network en-sure IFE's global success.
In 2009, the company moved to Kematen/Ybbs, from where the Knorr-Bremse GmbH Division IFE controls Knorr-Bremse's global business with regard to entrance systems for rail vehicles. Innovations for entrance systems (IFE) are developed and validated here, tailored to customer needs and sold worldwide. Under the brand name "RailServices", customers are supported with initial installations and modernization projects and supplied with spare parts from Kematen. The great success with in-novative products on the world market has allowed the workforce at the Kematen site to increase by 40% to 420 employees in recent years.
The combination of forward-looking, entrepreneurial action and groundbreaking technical innovations has secured IFE the world market leadership and full order books for years. More than a million IFE door systems are already on the move on all continents of the world.
The high resilience of the railway business and the innovative and reliable products have shown in recent years that IFE successfully masters challenges and crises. The order books, which are well filled with major projects such as deliveries of boarding systems for the Alstom Xtrapolis for the Span-ish railway operator RENFE, the subway in London (Tube), the Railjet and the Nightjet of ÖBB, allow IFE to look to the future with optimism and energy.
Always driven to find the best solutions, reliability is one of the brand values on which IFE has always placed the greatest importance: Customers trust in the quality and on-time delivery of the products, which usually do their job reliably for more than 40 years and offer passengers safety and comfort. Employees appreciate IFE as a reliable employer in the region. As a sponsor of schools, clubs, sport and culture as well as with numerous social commitments, IFE always expresses its strong connec-tion with the Ybbstal to the outside world.
As a thank you for their contribution to the success story of IFE, the two managing directors of Knorr- Bremse GmbH, Oliver Schmidt (CEO) and Markus Ber, invited all employees of IFE Kematen to a celebration of the 75th anniversary. After two years of joint celebrations being canceled due to the pandemic, the employees took the opportunity to party with a larger group of colleagues again.
Transformation of the IFE logo
