DaveB wrote:kennyc wrote:DaveB wrote:The sooner you guys get out from under stupid regulations made by EU idiots, the better.
since we don't make powders domestically we will always be effected by USA and European regulations as indeed are you
Royal Ordnance used to make propellant. I even visited their plant once upon a time. Did they stop?
In any event, the US isn't banning any powders, only agreeing to abide by stupid, unnecessary EU regulations. If the EU would just stop trying to regulate every single thing under the sun, or better yet, if the UK freed itself from the tyranny of the EU, the US would probably agree to go back to shipping those propellants.
It is donkey's years since RO made propellants. As long ago as the 1980s in its early privatised days, RORG bought in Vermuiden propellants for its smallarms ammunition lines - a Dutch firm that has long since closed on H&S grounds, as have three quarters of surviving European explosives plants over the last 30-40 years.
Right across the West, governments took plants that were originally built with at the very least government support as strategic assets and bearing in mind late 19th / early 20th century societies' transport constraints had to be built reasonably close to where the workers lived - and in a very different health & safety culture. By the 1970s / 80s, many of these plants were sold, but were clapped out bearing in mind the last major war we and other European countries had been involved in was Korea in the early 1950s. Since privatisation our and other western governments have had no interest in paying to keep any capacity in being in case of a future major shooting war.
At the same time, towns and suburbs had expanded massively taking residential or commercial properties up to explosives plants' boundaries. The H&S conflicts were obvious and it was the factories that went when regulations were tightened after incidents or reviews. Just Google Buncefield oil storage tank farm fire and see the idiocy of local authorities giving planning consents only a few years ago to commercial developments that eroded safety areas around this hazardous facility. If Buncefield had exploded on a weekday 9-5 instead of at 0600 on a Sunday, the casualties would have run into hundreds amongst the employees of the adjacent offices, warehouses and industrial units that were flattened in the blast.
Today, every ammunition component and every round of smallarms ammunition whether military or commercial made in the west is done so by private firms and if a country sees military ammunition consumption rise through involvement in a war, the stock response is that 'the market will provide' - and that's the world market as governments will buy from almost anybody these days, except the USA has kept its military procurement from and sales to the People's Republic of China in place, the almost sole exception (plus current trade embargoes on Vladimir Putin's Russia). So you and I are in constant competition with Uncle Sam amongst others for stuff where there is a fragile supply - demand balance.
Making explosives is a dangerous business, and in the past it was a very environmentally damaging one too. The Thales / ADI Mulwala plant in New South wales that makes Hodgdon's extruded propellants was set up by the USA (Du Pont Corporation with US government money) during WW2 (as was Footscray by Remington to make ammunition) to see locally sourced ammunition replace the hundreds of thousands of tons being shipped across the Pacific Ocean to the SWPTO (South West Pacific Theater of Operations) at a time when shipping and port capacity was one of the main problems in the US war against Japan. The environment was well down the priorities listings. Some 10 or so years ago Mulwala was life-expired with huge associated clean-up costs, and it took a 50% contribution from the Australian government to see it modernised and survive. (Does anybody think for a second that HMG would do this for an equivalent industry here?) This was opposed root and branch by Australian environmentalists who are still fighting to close the plant.
Chris Hodgdon told me many years ago that there is not a single plant in the USA making extruded powders (which involve far more dangerous processes than making the ball type) not because of any ban, but because the US government's EPA has put so many restrictions on the processes that a pound of US made powder would cost far more than the customer would ever pay. That's why the old Du Pont IMR powders are made in Canada now, not the USA.
So far as the US supplying us is concerned, NOBODY in the USA is banning or restricting anything. The Hodgdon Powder Company has been remarkably, I would say amazingly, supportive of the European shooter. Every pound of VarGet, H4350, H4831sc and a few other grades that we have received could and would have been sold in North America at a great deal less trouble to the company and with no need for expensive CE certification in recent years. And why are Hodgdon / the US so short? Two reasons - there is only one shipping service between Sydney and the USA and there are major constraints on the tonnage of explosives that can be loaded into individual ships. Hodgdon simply cannot get as much Australian product as it can sell, hence moves towards Canadian IMR powders in recent years where Hodgdon has taken on board all testing, loads data publication, bottling and distribution.
Yes, there have been demand spikes too because of US consumer scares and panic buying, but that is a minor irritant on the big picture of a barely balanced demand and supply situation that is unable to handle any external pressures now. Put simply, demand for recreational shooting products has grown exponentially in the USA in recent years (as it has here too) - and that's not just handloading. Where do Remington, Winchester, HSM, ABM, Cor-Bon et al buy their powders from? Yes ... the same places as you and me only they buy it in multi-tonne bulk lots. And that's before government suppliers like RORG get into the market.
The SOLE reason these products are disappearing is because of EU action. ie Project REACH. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA - and all the other western markets for them have NO equivalent rules / restrictions in place or it seems any intention to follow in the EU's footsteps. Nobody in Hodgdon's plant / HQ in Kansas is stopping export to us - they simply can no longer do it as they'd be breaking EU law after next June. If anybody has an argument with the various parties over this, it's Brussels' door that should be knocked on. (and good luck at that - I'm sure there will be a really sympathetic response from this wonderful democratic listen to the people outfit!!)
Of course, there are many in our society who are of the view that implementing this sort clean-up action is 'about time / should have been done years ago'. That's their right to hold these views. Another opposing view is that much of REACH like other such EU programmes is another form of indirect EU protectionism, whether it's farm and garden chemicals (that no longer work effectively in 'safe' forms) or propellants, or what's in the bottle of 'Cif' household cleaner that you buy. It effectively shuts out all non EU suppliers for whom the EU is a minor market and/or product reformulation is too difficult / expensive.
That's the final issue here. many people have said to me 'Surely, ADI or St. Marks Powder Co, or IMR can simply reformulate their powders replacing the 'dangerous' chemicals with 'safe' ones that do the same job. If only! It'd be as easy to reformulate Whisky say by simple product substitution - the whole is the sum of the parts and they all hang together, hence GD Canada introducing completely new IMR 'Enduron' grades.