| ISSUE 034 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| Everyone is counting shells. The European Union set a target of two million artillery rounds per year by the end of 2025, up from estimated annual capacity of 230,000 in early 2023, according to European Commission figures cited by Defense News in April 2025. There are dashboards for shell output. There is no dashboard for cotton linters. | |
| Cotton linters are the short fibres left on cotton seeds after the longer textile fibres have been removed. Refined to high-purity cellulose, they are the primary feedstock for nitrocellulose, the energetic base of smokeless propellant powder, which is loaded into the modular charges that send a 155mm shell downrange. Industrial-grade nitrocellulose goes into automotive lacquers, printing inks, and nail polish. Military and civilian buyers draw from the same plants. | |
| Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger told the Financial Times in 2024 that European producers obtained more than 70 percent of their cotton linters from China. A 2025 European Policy Centre report found European nitrocellulose output stood between 4,500 and 10,000 tonnes per year, per Al Majalla in August 2026. | |
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| PLATE · CORDITE PROPELLANT FACTORY, GRETNA, SCOTLAND, 1916 |
| In 1915, Britain discovered that shell casings were the easy part. The country could stamp metal in any engineering works. Cordite, the propellant that filled those shells, was a chemical product requiring acetone as a solvent, and acetone supply was limited. Factories producing propellant received conflicting demands from the Army and the Navy, per the U.S. Naval Institute’s Naval History Magazine in December 2024. Shell bodies accumulated without propellant to fire them. |
| The political crisis that followed brought down the Liberal government in May 1915. The Munitions of War Act, passed on 2 July 1915, created a Ministry of Munitions under David Lloyd George. One of its largest projects was HM Factory Gretna, built on the Scottish border as Britain’s biggest cordite plant, per Wikipedia. The government had to build a dedicated chemical factory because no civilian supplier could scale fast enough. |
| The structural point holds across a century. Fabrication capacity, whether stamping shell casings in 1915 or stamping them in 2026, can be sourced from civilian metalworking. Propellant chemistry requires dedicated plant, specialised feedstock, and handling permits that take years to obtain. |
| PLATE · NITROCHEMIE PROPELLANT POWDER PLANT, ASCHAU AM INN, BAVARIA | |||
| On 22 July 2026, Rheinmetall laid the foundation stone for an expanded propellant powder plant at its Nitrochemie subsidiary in Aschau am Inn, Bavaria. The company is investing 350 million euros at the site, part of 650 million euros total for propellant powder and precursor production, per a 23 July 2026 Rheinmetall press release. | |||
| Output at Aschau is planned to rise from 1,700 to 4,200 tonnes of propellant powder per year, with capacity for over one million modular charge modules annually, according to Militaeraktuell.at in July 2026. The workforce has grown roughly 80 percent since 2022 and exceeds 800 employees, per News.am. | |||
| Rheinmetall’s group target is 20,000 tonnes of propellant powder per year by 2030. Aschau would supply just over one fifth. The Nitrochemie Group, which operates the plant, is a joint venture of Rheinmetall and RUAG MRO Holding AG, with a second site at Wimmis in the Bernese Oberland, Switzerland. | |||
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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. |
