Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Why the price difference between new powders?

I did a quick peek in the reloading components isle at Sportsmans Warehouse last night. The stock of components was a sight for sore eyes as the shelves were nearly bursting with nearly every powder imaginable. It was then I noticed the discrepancy between the "new formulation" powders.

Older IMR powders were listed at $29.99, the new IMR Enduron powders were listed st $32.99. The older Alliant powders were listed at $29.99, but the newer Alliant powders (23 and 26 specifically) were listed at $24.99. This was not a sale price as they always list those with a red price tag.

In no way am I complaining that the newer Alliant powders are ~27% cheaper than the older ones, but why the difference between the newer Alliant and IMR? Is IMR just trying to milk us or are the new Alliant powders much cheaper to produce?

Has anyone else seen the same thing or is this just an anomaly in my area?

Truthfully I would expect that powder costs have more to do with pkg. transportation , regulation compliance and liability insurance than production costs. Like you I have noted some price fluctuation and suspect it might also be due to distributor pricing. Some of it might be older stock bought when things were short and now prices are eased somewhat. A lot of retailers are just too lazy or don't care enough to reprice their old stock as in the inventory printout shows we paid $20 for this lot and the pricing procedure is to multiply it by 1.4. The next box/ lot costs $17 . The minimum wage h.s.kid doesn't care enough to notice or ask.

Suspect, but don't know that the new, pricey ones have decoppering agents and are eco-friendly, which may add something to the cost, especially the latter.

The only new one I've bought was R26, which as I recall, was cheap.

Price also varies considerably from store to store, even for the same powder. Reloder 26 can be priced from $24.99 to $36.99 in stores within a 100-mile drive from here.

The price of raw nitrocellulose is around $1 per pound. So, yes, most of the cost is in the safe combining of additives, forming into flakes, balls, or extrusions, packaging, etc. Even so, it seems like a high margin product.

There's a lot of expense in shipping, especially if made overseas. But if a powder's really popular, a big batch on one one ship can reduce that some.

The local Bass Pro has RL15 at $33.95, RL17 $43.95. I can buy them both at the LGS for $24.95.

Sounds like the big stores have adopted the common retail practice of pricing stuff high so they can offer big "discounts".

I just bought some RL-17 and some RL-26, and I, too, was surprised by the price difference seeing that the newer RL-26 was $5 cheaper.

Not mentioned yet, and I have no idea if this is a factor in the price, but I notice that the RL-17 is made in Switzerland, and the RL-26 is made in Sweden.

John and others that might know,

I was just at my local FFL I use for transfers and saw the prices they were charging for powder, and there was no shortage of it.

Seems I was sleeping since last summer/fall when I last recall buying any. I had surgery and a few other things going on and don't really need to replace anything yet, but I glanced at the shelves. Was there a BIG price increase over the winter? Prices seemed to be a about $3-$5 a lb higher than I last looked. Wow, on a $22-$24 bottle that's a steep increase.

I'm going to have to check supplies and maybe look into using some of those new "cheaper" powders.

Geno

one could probably figure in the extra cost of
the components needed to work up loads for the
"new " powders and any savings would be negligible.
that happened to me some years ago when Accurate
powders hit the shelves here. they were usually
about $7.00 cheaper a pound. now, they're the same
price as the "old line" powders so no actual savings was
realized by all the necessary load work up i did.

It pays to put together s large order with some friends and order online.Even paying hazmat and shipping you come out way ahead.Most places have been advertising free hazmat lately.

Ranger99,

When Accurate powders first appeared, they were surplus powders purchased from various sources, including military--which is not only why they were so cheap, but often weren't very consistent from lot to lot.

Today's Accurate powders are made specifically in certain factories to consistent standards--which is not only why they cost more, but are far more consistent from lot to lot.

Well put. I still am a bit leery of AA powders due to past experiences . Even though they were cheaper I never felt I saved anything as it seemed that every pound required a who,e new load development process. With the cost of the bullets
prints and brass there wasn't much if any savings

Hodgdon recently raised their wholesale prices quite a bit, 8 lb jugs of hodgdon stuff at powdervalley went up about $20 each. 1 lb. cans of most hodgdon stuff went from $29 to $33 at the sportsman's warehouse in Memphis (Southaven).

I suspect it's a case of other's following suit and jumping on the price increase bandwagon. In Hodgdon's case I suspect it's just greed, most of their powders come from Australia and when I was down there a couple of months ago it was the cheapest I've seen it in the last 10 years for an American. The strong U.S. dollar is making goods from the rest of the world cheaper for Americans, definitely so for Australia, I could afford to drink more than one pint of beer this time. If anything I'd think what Hodgdon pays for powder from ADI is much less than in years past.

I would venture that the cost of getting it into the country has not gone down

Except that Reloader 26 is a newer formulation powder that is also touted to have a de-coppering agent and is purported to be temperature resistant. Which is one of the main reasons why I was curious that IMR has priced their new powders higher, but Alliant seems to have gone in the other direction.