Back in November, St Mark’s Powder, 1 of only 2 domestic smokeless propellant suppliers announced they were ceasing commercial sales. What this actually meant was unless you were Hodgdon, Olin (Winchester), Kinetic Group (Remington, Federal, Speer/CCI), or a sovereign government they would no longer sell direct. Allegedly all the smaller loading operations were now having to buy OEM powder through Hodgdon at a severe markup. This coupled with them pissing off everyone in the ammunition sector meant they were on the shit list for the limited amount of powder available.
Additionally, allegedly all of their tooling packages were purchased from Hornady. Because of this they neverdeveloped an internal pool of design and engineering staff. Design of ammo is not just the final shape of the loaded rounds but all the tooling to make and put together all the components. Making thousands of components a day that all have sub thousands of an inch tolerances is not easy.
I assume they will be cutting their SKU count and everything will be getting a hefty price increase. The gap in production lets the consumer forget how cheap it was a year ago and not get outraged.
