Old Drapatyi remarks on Donbas resurface, seized on by Russian media
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German arms maker Rheinmetall plans to more than double gunpowder production at its Aschau am Inn plant near Munich, ramping up annual capacity from 1,700 tonnes to 4,200 tonnes and over 1mn propellant charges a year by 2028, the company said on July 22, according to Bloomberg and CNBC.
Rheinmetall is investing €350mn in the Aschau site alone, part of a €650mn total outlay on propellant powder and its energy-intensive precursors group-wide. The workforce at the Nitrochemie subsidiary plant is set to grow from 800 to 1,300. A further €300mn is going into sites in Switzerland and Spain.
“Self-sufficiency is critical, especially for gunpowder — only a handful of producers exist worldwide,” said chief executive Armin Papperger. Under the “Project Firepower” plan, Rheinmetall is targeting 20,000 tonnes of gunpowder a year by 2030 to secure supply for the Bundeswehr, Nato and EU partners.
The expansion is the latest step in Rheinmetall's build-out of European ammunition capacity that bne IntelliNews has tracked closely, including its gunpowder and ammunition plant deal with Bulgaria and record German arms exports last year, when the company also opened a new ammunition factory in Unterlüß. Bavaria's state premier Markus Söder called the finished Aschau plant “the largest and most modern gunpowder plant in Europe.”
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