Somebody really needs to create an independent Canadian primer fab

if I had 8-10 mil to start a manufacturing business in Canada, it surely wouldn't be firearms related - the way things are.
I've known quite a few local commercial reloaders, and everything is against them. Just trying to find, and afford insurance is next to impossible without proper connections. Storing that much propellant / primer powder in one place? Our laws are not favorable for these types of business.
Let alone the red tape of producing, and then being able to ship that within Canada, and internationally.
I can find many other things to invest in that would be better for my time, effort and money. That's why no one is doing this here. But please, go right ahead, no one here would stop you.
 
steelgray said:
It is a sad fact that there are people like .30/06 FTW who seem to have nothing better to do than go from one thread to the next to just make negative comments about the poster or the subject - while adding nothing of value to the discussion.

I try to ignore them, but imagine that they must be truly empty, disturbed people.

You can form your own opinion about this. Here is a list of .30/06 FTW's latest posts. Please CLICK ON THIS LINK TO SEE THIS GUY'S CONTINUAL STRING OF GRATUITOUSLY-NASTY POSTS (LINK)..

To the many others who seem genuinely interested in this topic, please continue to contribute. Your thoughtful contributions are truly appreciated. This thread isn't about me, it is about the subject - and the subject is important.
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I don’t if it’s the same for anybody else, but that link of my posts appears to be broken lol.

Admittedly, I just find this whole thread entertaining. You make some huge assumptions, get called out on it, and then come up with even more outlandish ideas. Corrosive primers in 2023? Refurbished primers that apparently all of us have sitting around in our basements? Come on.
 
.30/06 FTW said:
I don’t if it’s the same for anybody else, but that link of my posts appears to be broken lol.

Admittedly, I just find this whole thread entertaining. You make some huge assumptions, get called out on it, and then come up with even more outlandish ideas. Corrosive primers in 2023? Refurbished primers that apparently all of us have sitting around in our basements? Come on.
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That's just how he rolls. His thread about how there's a big conspiracy with commercial brass manufacturers is a pretty good read, lol.
 
coldestcanuck said:
I don't see your labour costs anywhere. You say you have a couple of business degrees so, what do you actually do for a living?
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Again this is not about me. I wonder why you seem to want to go there. I assume you are another one of those people who surfs posts trying to find a chance to say some thing rude or offensive about the poster, rather than dealing with the subject of the post. Pretty sad.

As for the way that labour costs are imputed into the costing model, this is, of course inputted into the total estimated variable costs per brick - as is normal.

Specifically, I've suggested about 5 bucks of total variable costs for production, sales and distribution - where the product is sold wholesale through channels and about $8-10 per brick, where extra variable costs must also account for increased marketing and transactional costs, where the fab sells direct to market - via on-line sales. As noted, in both cases labour cost are a component of the aggregate estimate of variable costs - as is normal. I'm surprised that would be unclear to you.
 
steelgray said:
Again this is not ... blah..blah... would be unclear to you.
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So, what do you actually do for a living? :)

Not that hard to answer.
You first say you have a couple of business degrees and then when you get asked something about yourself you say "it's not about me"..
 
Biologist said:
I do not doubt your conclusions about manufacturing costs for the utmost precision for that single part in the Ford example you gave. But I am wondering if in fact the tolerances for primer cups is actually a simpler consideration than a precision part that is metallically hard and must absolutely fit within extreme tolerances.

My understanding of primer cups is that they are a soft alloy that is over-sized and made to "crush fit". This crush fit must work across all the brass cartridge manufacturers tolerance variances for the relevant primer pocket size, plus these need to crush fit across the life of brass for reloading as the primer pocket gradually enlarges with repeated firings.

In other words, the tolerance for height and diameter of the cup is "easier" to meet because is soft and crushable to fit, and will fit across a range of primer pocket sizes.

SAAMI shows the large and small rifle primer sizes and their tolerance ranges in the "Voluntary Industry Performance Standards for Pressure and Velocity of Centerfire Rifle Ammunition for the Use of Commercial Manufacturers"
I am not qualified to know how "easy" it is to make a tool or machine to achieve that tolerance, so you can check that out to see what it would entail. The tolerance for final seating of the primer in brass is specified as flush to 0.008 below flush. I am guessing (but do not know), that the 0.008 tolerance for seating depth is not an expensive constraint for a micro fab shop to achieve in tool making with the soft alloy?

But I am a Biologist, I know nothing about machining or manufacturing of stuff.
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I'm not going to get into it with you about the different tolerances for different industries because I'm not an expert, but it's not as simple as you would have it. Yes primers have to be slightly - very slightly - larger than the primer pocket so that they're a press-fit. They also have to be all the same from one primer to another, and I don't suspect a primer manufacturer is going to have a one-punch, one-die-steel, one-punch-holder rig. Maybe they will, but even though the metal being stamped is thin and soft, and the dies and punches will be hardened, they will/do wear out. The Ford part for which we made stamping dies was the end cap of a rectangular diesel fuel tank - after being stamped out it would go elsewhere in the plant to get two of them welded onto the main body of the fuel tank - not the most precise of end-products. Miss by a few thousandths? Weld metal fills the gap. Primers, I suspect, require more consistency. Imagine yourself having one primer fall out after you press it in, and the next one warping and breaking or even going off when you push it into the case.
All that said, if someone had the wherewithal and desire to do it, I think it would be great for Canada to have a privately owned primer maker that could be profitable... Probably do pretty well with LRP, SRP, and SGP. Oops. more machines..
 
steelgray said:
As for the way that labour costs are imputed into the costing model, this is, of course inputted into the total estimated variable costs per brick - as is normal.

Specifically, I've suggested about 5 bucks of total variable costs for production, sales and distribution - where the product is sold wholesale through channels and about $8-10 per brick, where extra variable costs must also account for increased marketing and transactional costs, where the fab sells direct to market - via on-line sales. As noted, in both cases labour cost are a component of the aggregate estimate of variable costs - as is normal. I'm surprised that would be unclear to you.
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I think your analysis on this is flawed.

For example, you earlier mentioned that dabbing of the primer compound into the cups is done by humans by hand. If this is true (I am doubtful of that), how fast could a person go, at a sustained rate? One cup every 3 seconds? Let's call it 2 seconds, to be generous. That's 30 primers a minute, 1800 per hour. Let's pay this dedicated workhorse $15/hour.

That's $8.33 per 1000 primers, just for the wages to this one person doing this one, horrible, dangerous, minimum wage job. Kind of plays havoc with your $5-total-cost-per-brick estimate.

I'm not saying the idea of making primers in Canada is impossible, or even weak. My problem is with the micro-scale idea. Primers need to be made small, precise, cheaply, and in enormous numbers. Like with microchips or threaded fasteners, the key to success in that is high-speed automation. A transfer press punching 10 cups per hit, one hit per second, will make 288,000 cups in an 8-hour shift. Ten such transfer presses oughtta get you in the right neighbourhood for volume. Now you just need equipment to achieve similar volume in cleaning and annealing those cups, stamping foils, dosing compound, inserting anvils, curing the assembly, inspection and packaging, and Bob's your uncle!

A primer factory making 10,000 primers a day by hand would likely have costs in the double-digit cents per unit. A primer factory that intends to succeed would need tens of millions in dollars invested, and outputs counted in the billions per year. When Expansion Industries announced their intent to produce primers, they announced a $100 million investment to convert an existing ammunition production / storage base to primer production. I submit that it would be impractical to consider an operation on any smaller scale.
 
BattleRife said:
I think your analysis on this is flawed.

For example, you earlier mentioned that dabbing of the primer compound into the cups is done by humans by hand. If this is true (I am doubtful of that), how fast could a person go, at a sustained rate? One cup every 3 seconds? Let's call it 2 seconds, to be generous. That's 30 primers a minute, 1800 per hour. Let's pay this dedicated workhorse $15/hour.

That's $8.33 per 1000 primers, just for the wages to this one person doing this one, horrible, dangerous, minimum wage job. Kind of plays havoc with your $5-total-cost-per-brick estimate.

I'm not saying the idea of making primers in Canada is impossible, or even weak. My problem is with the micro-scale idea. Primers need to be made small, precise, cheaply, and in enormous numbers. Like with microchips or threaded fasteners, the key to success in that is high-speed automation. A transfer press punching 10 cups per hit, one hit per second, will make 288,000 cups in an 8-hour shift. Ten such transfer presses oughtta get you in the right neighbourhood for volume. Now you just need equipment to achieve similar volume in cleaning and annealing those cups, stamping foils, dosing compound, inserting anvils, curing the assembly, inspection and packaging, and Bob's your uncle!

A primer factory making 10,000 primers a day by hand would likely have costs in the double-digit cents per unit. A primer factory that intends to succeed would need tens of millions in dollars invested, and outputs counted in the billions per year. When Expansion Industries announced their intent to produce primers, they announced a $100 million investment to convert an existing ammunition production / storage base to primer production. I submit that it would be impractical to consider an operation on any smaller scale.
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Thanks for you comment BattleRife. I always find you have useful, well thought out ideas. I had heard - from an industry insider - that there is some manual work involved with priming the cups - and that getting workers for this job was a bottleneck for the producers. The insider who told me that didn't say the job was done one-at-a-time or whatever, but that may have been assumed. Instead, it looks like this is done using a ball of primer material - with the labourer rubbing the ball over an array of primers, held in a jig. I'd say that could still be done that way, even when the scale of production was reduced to "mini fab".

Here is a video that you might find useful.


People who think I'm saying this is all easy aren't getting that from me. I've already said that nothing worthwhile is ever easy. However, this is certainly a very basic manufactured product.

Compare this to the challenges of developing, manufacturing and selling a new firearm, like the WC180-C. That would be an order-of-magnitude more daunting challenge with WAY more parts to be designed and manufactured and with a lot more risk and much lower expected profit margins. Yet that got done - and I give full credit to those entrepreneurs! It is really because of the challenges that this opportunity hasn't yet been tapped.

If you read back you will find that many people have offered useful comments and suggestions. Any successful business plan for a venture like this has to coherently look at all of the options - and all decisions have to me made with a pragmatic connection to the realities of the situation.

That's why your comments - and those of others are very useful. Otherwise, I just ignore the comments of those far fewer malicious posters who are just out to engage in personal attacks, or who are just trying to throw bombs. I'm hoping they will be taken care of by the mods, shortly.
 
AikiNut said:
Imagine yourself having one primer fall out after you press it in, and the next one warping and breaking or even going off when you push it into the case.
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Yes, agreed, the QC requirements in the plant would have to be 100% effective. The costs of ensuring 100% primer functioning and safety confidence might be the determining factor for eliminating all but the biggest ammo manufacturing companies which can provide the resources for QC. Lack of QC and stories of failure to fire in the field by hunters and sports shooters, would quickly kill the brand's reputation and sales. To be able to afford the absolute QC costs, that may require the massive economy of scale to produce zillions of primers that all will function flawlessly. Maybe that answers the question as to why there are no small volume primer manufacturers.

I have no doubt that all the issues mentioned by others, such as regs for explosives, insurance, gov't regulator zeal, etc, are all valid impediments to making anything happen in Canada.

I hold out hope that one day, a company like Nammo will build plants in Canada that manufacture all the components.....and who would build/sponsor state of the art world class shooting facilities, (F-Class, PRS, highpower, smallbore, pistol, etc), at least one in each province/territory. It would pay them in the long run to do that. Cultivate and grow new generations of shooters, who will then buy ammo and reloading components, teach their children to shoot, etc., who then buy more, etc.
 
buckbrush said:
I believe a new primer plant has just been built in Texas?
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That's probably the Expansion Industries one.

Fiocchi and SIG Sauer have also announced the intent of opening new primer plants in the USA, both in Arkansas.

ht tps://fiocchiusa.com/news/fiocchi-usa-selects-little-rock,-arkansas-for-new-primer-manufacturing-facility.html
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/jun/20/jacksonville-ammo-plant-to-grow/

As much as supply has been so short in the recent past, there is actually a potential for a primer glut in a few years.
 
BattleRife said:
That's probably the Expansion Industries one.

Fiocchi and SIG Sauer have also announced the intent of opening new primer plants in the USA, both in Arkansas.

ht tps://fiocchiusa.com/news/fiocchi-usa-selects-little-rock,-arkansas-for-new-primer-manufacturing-facility.html
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/jun/20/jacksonville-ammo-plant-to-grow/

As much as supply has been so short in the recent past, there is actually a potential for a primer glut in a few years.
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I think that once new big-4 commercial primer supplies become available - in a year or so, people while engage in hoard buying. That will mean that stores will get new stocks in, but but they will be sold very quickly. News of this will encourage more hoard buying when the next delivery comes, and the next.

Before you know it, every reloader/hoarder who gets in on this will have WAY more primers than they need and, yes, they will probably stop buying a year after they horded dozens of bricks. Maybe that's when the new plants (Fiocchi, etc.) will come on-line and will add to the US production - leading to a glut. By that time, most of the industry will have switched to produce green/ heavy metal free primers - so the hoarders will have dozens of bricks of the previous generation of primers, in their basements.
 
steelgray said:
Again this is not about me. I wonder why you seem to want to go there. I assume you are another one of those people who surfs posts trying to find a chance to say some thing rude or offensive about the poster, rather than dealing with the subject of the post. Pretty sad.

As for the way that labour costs are imputed into the costing model, this is, of course inputted into the total estimated variable costs per brick - as is normal.

Specifically, I've suggested about 5 bucks of total variable costs for production, sales and distribution - where the product is sold wholesale through channels and about $8-10 per brick, where extra variable costs must also account for increased marketing and transactional costs, where the fab sells direct to market - via on-line sales. As noted, in both cases labour cost are a component of the aggregate estimate of variable costs - as is normal. I'm surprised that would be unclear to you.
Click to expand...

Well, you brought up Business degrees, I didn't. If you're going to imply expertise, then be prepared to defend that position. Secondly your "mini cost breakdown that I replied to made no mention of labour cost, again, be prepared to explain that. I don't know why it would be clear to me. you didn't mention it as I just said, so I asked for clarification. As someone who has been through the university process and has some familiarity with the way a business works you should know that being condescending when replying to legitimate questions. I'm concerned that you didn't learn that before your degree was granted.
 
coldestcanuck said:
Well, you brought up Business degrees, I didn't. If you're going to imply expertise, then be prepared to defend that position. Secondly your "mini cost breakdown that I replied to made no mention of labour cost, again, be prepared to explain that. I don't know why it would be clear to me. you didn't mention it as I just said, so I asked for clarification. As someone who has been through the university process and has some familiarity with the way a business works you should know that being condescending when replying to legitimate questions. I'm concerned that you didn't learn that before your degree was granted.
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This.
 
coldestcanuck said:
Well, you brought up Business degrees, I didn't. If you're going to imply expertise, then be prepared to defend that position. Secondly your "mini cost breakdown that I replied to made no mention of labour cost, again, be prepared to explain that. I don't know why it would be clear to me. you didn't mention it as I just said, so I asked for clarification. As someone who has been through the university process and has some familiarity with the way a business works you should know that being condescending when replying to legitimate questions. I'm concerned that you didn't learn that before your degree was granted.
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If you don't know what the normal components of variable costs are - in the case of a manufacturing operation - you might want to get a KFC franchise.
 
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