| ISSUE 012 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| The number everyone quotes for American artillery is shells per month. The propelling charge behind the shell rarely gets a number of its own, and nitroguanidine, about half of the M31A2 propellant loaded into the Army’s M232A2 155mm charges, gets none. | |
| Nitroguanidine is a colourless needle crystal. Alzchem builds it from coal, limestone and air, through calcium carbide and calcium cyanamide, with guanidine nitrate as the last step before nitration, and sells it into plant protection and airbag propellant as well as defence. An Army Contracting Command notice on SAM.gov puts it at approximately 50 percent of the dry weight of the M30 and M31A2 triple-base propellants fired from the M777 and M109 howitzers. | |
| An Army report to Congress dated 2 September 2025, reported by Inside Defense on 26 November 2025, names Alzchem Group in Germany as the single source and warns that falling German demand for calcium cyanamide, a fertiliser and one of the building blocks, could bring higher costs, a worse product or an end to production. The Army’s own notice says the government stockpile, about 17 million pounds made at Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant, Kansas, in the late 1980s, does not meet the propellant specification. | |
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| PLATE · TRANS-ALASKA PIPELINE CONSTRUCTION, ALASKA, 1975–1977 |
| Oil was found at Prudhoe Bay, on Alaska’s North Slope, in 1968. The pipeline to carry it south then spent five years in studies, hearings and litigation. The final bill cleared Congress after the 1973 Arab oil embargo began, and Richard Nixon signed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act on 16 November 1973. |
| Then the build. The haul road north from the Yukon River took 1974. The first pipe went under the Tonsina River on 27 March 1975, and pipeline employment peaked at 21,600 that August. Oil entered at Pump Station 1 on 20 June 1977 and reached the Valdez terminal on 28 July, 44 months after the signature. |
| The embargo supplied the decision. The lead time ran at the speed of road building, pipe welding and pump station commissioning, on a route the Interior Department had already studied for years. |
| PLATE · NITROGUANIDINE CRYSTALLISATION, PLANNED SITE, BUSHY PARK, SOUTH CAROLINA | |||
| On 8 July 2026 Alzchem Group, headquartered in Trostberg, Bavaria, selected Bushy Park in Berkeley County, South Carolina, for nitroguanidine production supplying the US market under a US government contract. Planned investment is approximately $150 million, with support from the federal government, the state and the county. | |||
| The Department of Defense had committed $150 million in October 2024 toward a US plant by the end of 2029, conditional on a site being found. Alzchem now plans construction in 2027 and commissioning in 2029. The first stage of its German expansion drew a €34.4 million grant in March 2024 under the EU’s Act in Support of Ammunition Production. | |||
| Under the July announcement, intermediate products will continue to be made at Alzchem’s German sites. | |||
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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. |
