| ISSUE 041 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| Everyone is counting shells. Two million 155mm rounds per year is the European capacity objective, per the EU’s industry directorate. Capacity has increased roughly fivefold since 2022, per industry estimates. Now ask where the explosive fill for those rounds comes from. | |
| Every one of those rounds requires several kilograms of high-explosive compound. The US Army’s M795 155mm projectile carries 10.8 kilograms, per General Dynamics OTS. Shell fills across NATO inventories include TNT, Composition B (roughly 60 percent RDX and 40 percent TNT), and newer insensitive formulations containing RDX. The compound appears in artillery rounds, warheads, demolition charges, and anti-tank mines. | |
| Eurenco, which the French Aerospace Industries Association GIFAS describes as Europe’s leading explosives maker, has a production capacity of roughly 600 tonnes of explosives per year at its Sorgues plant in southeastern France, per Usine Nouvelle. The company plans an approximately €200 million investment to double its production capacity. Other European military explosives producers include Nitro-Chem in Poland and Chemring in the United Kingdom. Two greenfield RDX plants in Estonia and Latvia are under development, with first production expected in 2027 at the earliest. | |
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With PayPal and its innovative digital payment technology.
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| PLATE · NATIONAL SHELL FILLING FACTORY, CHILWELL, 1916 |
| In May 1915, The Times reported that British forces on the Western Front lacked sufficient high-explosive shells, triggering a political crisis. At the war’s outset, shells were filled with lyddite, requiring imported raw materials, per the Chilwell factory record. When lyddite ran short, amatol, a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate, became the standard fill. The Munitions of War Act of 2 July 1915 brought private companies under the control of the Ministry of Munitions under David Lloyd George to build the missing capacity. |
| The National Shell Filling Factory at Chilwell in Nottinghamshire broke ground on 13 September 1915 and filled its first shell on 8 January 1916, per the factory’s commemorative record. By the armistice, Chilwell had filled 19.4 million shells using 121,360 tons of explosive, accounting for 50.8 percent of all British high-explosive shell output of 60-pounder to 15-inch during the war. |
| Wartime urgency, suspended regulations, and unlimited state funding produced that four-month timeline from groundbreaking to first production. Viscount Chetwynd received the commission to design and build the plant on 20 August 1915, three and a half weeks before the first sod was turned. |
| PLATE · WOLFRAM EUROPA COMPLEX, JĒKABPILS, LATVIA | |||
| On 26 August 2026, Estonian company Wolfram Europa announced a €200 million investment in an explosives and warhead complex near Jēkabpils in eastern Latvia, per ERR News. The 40-hectare facility, on land secured from Latvia’s State Forests, is planned in three phases beginning 2027. | |||
| At full capacity the plant expects to produce up to 300 metric tonnes of RDX or 100 metric tonnes of HMX per year, alongside 100,000 anti-tank mines and 200,000 warheads annually, per the company’s statement. CEO Magnus-Valdemar Saar described the European shortfall to ERR: “investment remains focused primarily on platforms and final assembly. This is the explosives gap.” | |||
| The Estonian government separately incorporated Hexest Materials AS on 28 May 2025 to build a state-owned RDX factory targeting 1,200 tonnes per year, per the company and ERR reporting. On 8 October 2026, the government approved the spatial plan for a defence industry park at Piirsalu in western Estonia, with state infrastructure funding of over €6 million, per ERR News. | |||
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| 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. |
