Petition for a Canadian bullet manufacturer

For better or worse... There are not enough reloaders/shooters in all of Canada to make it worthwhile for a business person to set up business manufacturing boolits...

AIM is making pistol boolits... I use 'em like 'em and will continue to buy 'em, but I believe AIM's boolit business is a recent/secondary activity for the parent company Alchemy Extrusions Inc. who by the looks of it are into all sorts of lead business...
 
B said:
Forgive my complete ignorance, but when you say "retooled" is that like buying a set of dies? As in, you buy the machine to produce 9mm, then retool whenever needed to produce .40? Or would the machine then be for .40 only until it is again retooled?
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Yes, you change the dies and punches. The basic machine can be used to make bullets of pretty much any size.
 
Just to put a point on it; Aim produces hard cast, plated bullets in pistol calibers only......for now. We've talked about trying to develop a few rifle calibers, but market demands just wouldn't cover the development costs right now.
 
Matrix bullets in the 9.3X62

Okay, boys and girls, here's the first group shot with the 9.3 Matrix 270 gr bonded core.

DSC05985.jpg



Shot late this afternoon, rifle set up just the way it hunts with Leupold 3X scope, 100 yd, -15C, starting load, 58 gr Varget, WLR primer, Norma brass, 2364 fps out of 21 inch barrel. Target grid is half-inch.

Group is less than 1 1/8 inch. This is good news. :) Will post some more tomorrow.

Ted
 
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In the early 90's there was a Ammo manufacturer that started up in southern Alberta. They produced good ammo and were going to start to sell bullets also but lasted only a couple of years and went out of business.

Lots of rumors to what went wrong but basically they couldn't compete with American manufacturers that were about the same cost and quality and had a good reputation behind there name.

For my .300 Win Mag I buy nosler bullets at about 1 box per year if that and the rest I cast my own.

Bullet Barn sells .45 acp rn 230 grn. bullets for about 150.00 per thousand, cast 1000 bullets yourself and you have just paid for a lee melting pot, a 6 cavity mold and lee sizer and some lube. Cast another 1000 and you have paid for a lube sizer and a die. From now on if you want a different bullet then you buy the mold, cast 500 with it and it has paid for itself.
 
If we look around the world, small countries have a robust bullet manufacturing capability; South Africa has Rhino and GS Custom, Finland has Lapua, Australia has Woodleigh, etc. There is no reason why a Canadian company cannot produce a world class bullet, but if you want good bullets you have to get past the idea that they will be cheap. If you want cheap shoot cast. If you want run or the mill buy Remington bulk bullets or Hornady. There is no reason to produce a product that already floods the market at prices cheaper than you can produce it for. Bullet making is a niche market, so you have to offer something special in order to attract international sales, and without international sales you won't survive. Seems to me we used to have a Canadian ammunition manufacturing corporation that existed under 3 different names in my lifetime, before they disappeared altogether. They produced loaded ammo, produced their own line of bullets, and produced brass for a broad range for cartridges available to handloaders. Sounds like a can't loose situation, I wonder what ever happened to them?
 
Boomer said:
If we look around the world, small countries have a robust bullet manufacturing capability; South Africa has Rhino and GS Custom, Finland has Lapua, Australia has Woodleigh, etc. There is no reason why a Canadian company cannot produce a world class bullet, snip?
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There is a very good reason Canada does not have an ammunition and arms manufacturing industry. It is the Canadian federal government and the bureaucratic policy that has killed the industry.

Fifty years ago Dominion manufactured some of the best and most respected ammo in the world. Dominion has been destroyed by small town cheap companies that sold poor quality ammo to shooters and military contracts in the name of profit.
Every ammunition company that has started up has folded due to incredible bureaucratic interference.
Even ammunition importers have to face incredible bureaucratic interference and rules to get ammunition into the country.
Simply put Canada has TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT to allow a successful ammo manufacturer to succeed.
Liability and insurance are also an issue. One lawsuit can destroy a small company, the insurance rates can push their product prices to the point where they are no longer competitive. It is said that over fifty percent of the initial manufacturing cost of a step ladder is liability insurance. Imagine the potential for abuse for ammo if it was as dangerous a step ladder.
 
Bullet Barn's pricing seems rather high for cast bullets. Both Cactus Plains and M.T. Chambers (Ben Hunchak) sell perfectly good cast bullets for much less.
 
Boomer said:
If we look around the world, small countries have a robust bullet manufacturing capability; South Africa has Rhino and GS Custom, Finland has Lapua, Australia has Woodleigh, etc. There is no reason why a Canadian company cannot produce a world class bullet, but if you want good bullets you have to get past the idea that they will be cheap. If you want cheap shoot cast. If you want run or the mill buy Remington bulk bullets or Hornady. There is no reason to produce a product that already floods the market at prices cheaper than you can produce it for. Bullet making is a niche market, so you have to offer something special in order to attract international sales, and without international sales you won't survive. Seems to me we used to have a Canadian ammunition manufacturing corporation that existed under 3 different names in my lifetime, before they disappeared altogether. They produced loaded ammo, produced their own line of bullets, and produced brass for a broad range for cartridges available to handloaders. Sounds like a can't loose situation, I wonder what ever happened to them?
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Those bullet makers are in the custom biz (not Lapua, but that was traditionally a military issue). We are so well served by the US make on most things, so there has been little incentive. CIL/SNC closed when their civi plant machines wore out. They are still very much alive in the military ammo biz.
 
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