Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Is Hodgdon now a powder monopoly

It should be understood that Hodgdon is just the distributor for most of their powders. They only manufacture Goex black powder and a few of the substitutes. All the smokeless powder is purchased from other suppliers. There isn't a monopoly on smokeless powder, but there are few sources of it in the United States due to the inherent risks involved in manufacturing explosives/propellants/flammables, and the regulatory costs and risks, and what is practically a monopsony.

All the ball powders are made at St. Marks in Florida which is now owned by General Dynamics. I believe it was originally built/owned by Olin (the outfit that bought out the original Winchester), then it was sold by Olin (Winchester brand ammo) when they got out of the powder business. They sold it to ATK (Alliant). ATK itself had acquired Alliant from Hercules which was several companies by that name prior, but a large portion of it was originally Dupont. So ATK merged it Orbital Systems (this is all rocket stuff), and they spun off their sporting goods as a company called "Vista Outdoor" which includes the Alliant brand powder, Federal, CCI, Speer, RCBS and now Remington. ATK did not spin off the St. Marks plant as part of Vista Outdoors. That plant generates revenue primarily for government and military contracts and the sporting goods business is comparatively small. Then General Dynamics bought ATK, so now St. Marks is run by them.

The US-made flake and extruded powders are all made at New River Energetics at the Radford Arsenal. Alliant (ATK) ran that for a while, but BAE Systems has the current contract to run Radford overall.

I don't think there are any other smokeless plants in the US that are still operating. Does Lake City produce powder, or just cartridges? It's not likely that any will be built anytime soon. There are others in Canada, Australia, Belgium, Finland, and elsewhere. I live in a sparsely populated rural area and activists raise hell and gridlock the planning commission, county commission, the courts, and everything they can if someone wants to build a small slaughterhouse to process 60 head of cattle a week because it will stink. I can only imagine what the reaction would be to a proposal to build a large-scale nitroglycerin explosives plant. You have a better chance of building it on the moon.

Investors don't want to build that kind of thing anyway. They're into e-vehicles, green energy, 5G, meal kits, and stuff that millennials like. The only way to pay for a propellant plant would be with government contracts. Reloading hobbyists can't afford to build a powder plant. It's the US government and it's defense contractor suppliers that support St. Marks and Radford. Alliant, Hodgdon, Federal, Winchester, Remington, are just little side jobs.