What’s Up With Primer Production?
BY Herschel Smith
1 year, 10 months ago
As I suspected, mostly, with military and LE getting the lion’s share of the ammunition and primers. As for supply chain problems with Covid, I don’t buy that excuse any more. That dog won’t hunt. The ships are moving, they’re just moving into ports at Savannah and Charleston (rather than California), with the inland port being in Greenville, S.C., and the transport corridor being I-85 and connected roads (such as I-40). The trucks are still moving too. So I don’t buy the logistics excuse.
One commenter to the video makes this remark.
I work for one of the largest manufacturers of ammunition and primers and as far as I know we haven’t had big issues with getting supplies but have had challenges with getting them at a reasonable cost, our primer department has always been and still is the busiest department and runs full speed 24/7 I can buy directly from the plant at our company store and have trouble getting primers because they are still running behind for the very reasons mentioned in the video, and there is a labor problem, the primer department is the most dangerous department due to the highly explosive nature, its quite common for a charging table to blow, these people are under a constant stress not only for fear of explosion but the bosses are very hard on them because they are responsible for the explosions when they do occur, so this leads to high turnover rates in the department.
I have no evidence that this commenter actually works for an ammunition manufacturer, but let’s assume he does for the sake of argument.
Let’s tackle the first alleged problem. If they’re having trouble with the charging tables, that’s a safety issue and they need safety engineers to come in and set things right, or OSHA will eventually shut them down and there will be no business to tend to. No worker should be exposed to hazardous work conditions in industry today since there is a sufficient body of engineering practices and principles that can make things better. It’s more expensive, but in the end, it will save your industry.
As for the second problem, worker morale and turnover, that’s a management problem. Let me be more blunt. I’ve worked in industry for 43 years. Low morale is ALWAYS management’s fault. If management cannot retain employees, the industry doesn’t deserve to exist. These problems are fixable.
On January 29, 2023 at 10:42 pm, PGF said:
Here’s an aspect of Ammo shortages that is little discussed. The bulk buyers are distributors. Every time there is a scare, they stop shipping and start stocking. They keep the ammo for their own purposes. And gun store owners keep back stock by not restocking shelves. The distributors and gun store owners are not going to be caught short. It’s the intermediaries. That’s a lot of what happened during Obama.
You better stock your own supply. The supply chain in ammo is folks just like you; they know guns and ammo are existential to freedom.
He makes a great point about the priority of customers in production; government comes first.
I like the guy in the video; he’s a great brother in Christ.
On January 30, 2023 at 12:28 pm, Grunt said:
Large rifle primers are and have been unavailable for a long time. If gov’t is first in line, does that mean that they are producing huge amounts of ammo larger than 5.56 and eating up all the LR primers? Maybe the new 6.8 for the new rifle debacle? CCI 41’s for 5.56 are hit and miss, mostly miss, but I have not had to worry about running out, like I do with large rifle primers.
Inquiring minds want to know.