Generally that leaves only Alliant and Vihtavouri as competitors. It is going to be interesting to see how Hodgdon consolidates its powders.
Yes and no.Take a step back in this. Who is actually making the powder? As I'm reading it, you've got a bunch of powder factories worldwide that are making huge batches of powder--tons of it, and then handing it off to Hodgdon to sell here in the States. Hodgdon does all the marketing, distribution, end-user support, etc and a value-added thing.
I used to work for a solder factory. We made and sold our brand-- by the ton to distributors, but we also OEM'd for others. We found it much easier and profitable to make and sell by the ton and let somebody else package and label it however they chose. We had a small label aluminum solder that sold like hotcakes down south for patching boats. We couldn't sell our own brand, but we'd bought this little company that got wiped out in a hurricane and used their labels on our product. Folks swore it was superior stuff, even though it was the same as our aluminum solder.
In some ways, Hodgdon has made itself more like Sears. They get everyone else to make their stuff and then label it as the Sears brand (Craftsman, Ted Williams, Diehard, etc) . Except they only recently started selling to end-users.
