| ISSUE 027 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| Hexamethylenetetramine, called hexamine in the trade, is a white crystalline solid made by condensing formaldehyde with ammonia, as a 1978 Army study described the process. In 1977, phenolic resins took 64 percent of American hexamine output and RDX production took 18 percent, the study recorded. Hexamine is the starting material that the Bachmann process nitrates into RDX. | |
| The International Trade Commission’s hexamine investigations, instituted on September 30, 2024, were brought by Bakelite Synthetics, which described itself as the sole American producer. Its plant is at Riegelwood, North Carolina. Bakelite’s petition argued that Russia, formerly a significant supplier to the American market, had left the market, and that imports from China, Germany, India and Saudi Arabia took its place. | |
| Commerce published final determinations for China on July 18, 2025: a dumping margin of 405.19 percent and a countervailing duty rate of 420.73 percent. Both rates rest on adverse facts available, applied when Chinese producers did not fully cooperate, so they are penalty rates rather than measured price gaps. Commerce published orders on Chinese hexamine on September 11, 2025. Antidumping orders on Germany, India and Saudi Arabia, and a countervailing duty order on India, took effect on January 7, 2026. Saudi Arabia’s margin, amended at publication, is 8.10 percent. | |
|
Where should you invest $100 right now?
Elon Musk just invented and patented this new AI technology…
And he's predicting it will launch a NEW industry that will grow more than 7 million percent in the coming years.
Even if he's only 10% right, that would still be enough to grow $100 into more than $700,000.
| PLATE · The 1973 Arab oil embargo |
| In October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries cut production and embargoed shipments to the United States. The average nominal price of imported crude tripled from 1973 to 1974, the Congressional Research Service recorded in 2020. The exposure had been in the published figures for years: domestic production peaked in 1970, and net petroleum imports nearly doubled between 1970 and 1973, the Energy Information Administration told Congress in December 2014. |
| Congress answered in 1975 with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which authorized a Strategic Petroleum Reserve of up to 1 billion barrels, with an initial requirement to store 150 million, according to a 2017 Congressional Research Service report. |
| Hexamine’s exposure was written down in the same years. The Army study recorded that Holston Army Ammunition Plant bought 32 percent of American civilian hexamine production in 1975. Two years later, RDX’s share had fallen to 18 percent. The study listed six domestic producers with 154 million pounds of combined annual capacity, and calculated that full mobilization would need about 75 percent of that capacity. The six producers of 1977 have become one. |
| PLATE · Bakelite Synthetics hexamine plant, Riegelwood, North Carolina | |||
| Bakelite Synthetics makes powdered hexamine at 333 Neils Eddy Road in Riegelwood, North Carolina, a site Hexion referred to as Acme. The business belonged to Hexion until April 30, 2021, when Hexion sold its hexamine and phenolic specialty resins businesses to Black Diamond and Investindustrial, which launched them the next day as Bakelite Synthetics. | |||
| Riegelwood was already a hexamine town in 1977. The Army study named Wright Chemical at Riegelwood among the six producers, recording that it sold all of its hexamine into the merchant market and ran a closed-circuit water system that recaptured spills. | |||
| The 1978 study described the civilian process as a reactor, a vacuum evaporator, a centrifuge and a drier. A June 2022 North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality draft permit lists the Riegelwood hexamine process unit as a reactor, an evaporator, crystallizers and a centrifuge. Forty-four years apart, the two descriptions outline nearly the same process. | |||
|
|||
|
|
|||
| Every supply figure carries a date and a source in the text. Not a footnote. In the sentence. | |||
| FREE. NO STOCK PICKS. NO PREDICTIONS. | |||
| Nothing here is investment advice. No company is named as an investment. |
