Support Your Canadian Ammunition Manufacturers - NOW IS THE TIME!

New to the sport and only ever purchased foreign made ammo. But would love to support Canadian made if possible. In truth I didn't even know there was Canadian made ammunition. if we could get a good list of shops that make new and re-manufactured I'd gladly buy from them.
 
Hard to justify buying Canadian made ammunition when Canadian reloaded ammunition is the same price or more expesive than imported ammunition and rarely in stock anywhere. Most are selling remanufactured ammunition and not even using new cases. Gotta get your prices down and supply a consistant inventory before people will start buying from you. The second time I go to a site and they have the NO INVENTORY label up on what I want then I rarely check back. Don't use the Covid crap as an excuse. Canadian Ammunition manufacturers sites where like that prior to any issues.

You want to have a vaild Canadian Made alternative? Start making 1 or 2 of the most common caibre's in volume, get your effeciencies up and costs down. If you only made 9mm and 45acp you could figure out your processing well and create efficiencies in manufacturing. Come to market competative and with a capacity that can supply the customer once they start buying from you.

Anyone interested in investing?
 
BoogerChew said:
Hard to justify buying Canadian made ammunition when Canadian reloaded ammunition is the same price or more expensive than imported ammunition and rarely in stock anywhere. Most are selling remanufactured ammunition and not even using new cases. Gotta get your prices down and supply a consistent inventory before people will start buying from you. The second time I go to a site and they have the NO INVENTORY label up on what I want then I rarely check back. Don't use the Covid crap as an excuse. Canadian Ammunition manufacturers sites where like that prior to any issues.

You want to have a vaild Canadian Made alternative? Start making 1 or 2 of the most common caibre's in volume, get your effeciencies up and costs down. If you only made 9mm and 45acp you could figure out your processing well and create efficiencies in manufacturing. Come to market competative and with a capacity that can supply the customer once they start buying from you.

Anyone interested in investing?
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I think you may have missed the mark on this one. There is a certain deflection point in which it becomes cheaper to (re)manufacture ammunition. Once you exceed one million pieces annually, your components don't really get cheaper per unit. You get efficiencies by moving faster (multiple production lines, more automation required, more staff, more overhead) I am probably the most automated shop you will see in Canada, as I can run 10,000 pieces of 9mm per hour, by myself, but it cost me $500,000 to get there.

1) Re-manufactured ammunition by definition uses fired cases. Otherwise it would be "new ammunition"

2) I was involved with supplying a commercial re manufacturer that output over 10,000,000 pieces a year, it was as streamlined and efficient as you can get without spending five to ten million dollars on high level automation.

3) All components are priced in USD/Euro in OEM quantities, so when ammunition is being sold by US manufacturers at cost to move stock out from inventory (cost recovery exercise), you cannot compete with that. Unless you manufacture all your own components, at which point you become an OEM. As they where selling it at a price in which they got their "money back", and the distributor, and retailers made their money.

4) The American companies where dumping common ammunition into the Canadian market for the past few years. There was industry action to try and get the Canadian Trade Commission to look into it, however there was no political will as our current government would rather see anything firearms related go out of business. You as the consumer have been able to pay in Canadian dollars what Americans have been paying is USD for 9mm and .223

Click here to read about what "Dumping" is.

If you would like to discuss this further, feel free to PM me.
 
Black Sheep, thank you for explaining this. I knew something didn’t add up and I have seen this in other industries, but I wasn’t aware is what was taking place here. This is the first explanation I’ve seen that made sense.

What would be nice to see is a Canadian supplier spring up once us prices inflate. That would be pretty tough to do with startup capital required, but it would be pretty neat if possible. Of course, it would be hard if they were outsourcing any component because their competitor could raise the price on one single component to edge them out. Like if fed/rem/win is your competition but provides your bullets, they just need to charge to much for the bullets to sink your ship. Everything would need to be made here and I doubt that’s likely to be happening ever.

Thank you for the lesson, very informative.
 
Canada Ammo is currently making their own 7.62x39 ammunition.

Non-corrosive.

And it passes the "magnet test". (No steel in the projectile)

They're selling it for $0.50 per round, which seems like a hell of a good deal.
 
BlackSheepBrass said:
3) All components are priced in USD/Euro in OEM quantities, so when ammunition is being sold by US manufacturers at cost to move stock out from inventory (cost recovery exercise), you cannot compete with that. Unless you manufacture all your own components, at which point you become an OEM. As they where selling it at a price in which they got their "money back", and the distributor, and retailers made their money.

4) The American companies where dumping common ammunition into the Canadian market for the past few years. ... You as the consumer have been able to pay in Canadian dollars what Americans have been paying is USD for 9mm and .223
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As a consumer I've been paying in Canadian dollars what Americans have been paying in USD for 9mm and .223???

I disagree. At no point in the past 10 years have I found 9mm or 223 priced the same, either on par or taking into account the dollar exchange difference. I have always paid more here in Canada.

I get that our dollar hurts us as well as taxes & labor costs in comparison. I get that we do not have the market size the US does. The inability of Canadian ammunition manufacturing to purchase direct from US manufacturers of the components of ammunition also hurts us and adds cost. I get that.

But I have not paid in Canadian dollars for what Americans have been paying in USD.
 
Planetmail 12, I have seen the same thing. The US sites always have lower ammo charges. But on top of those is shipping, import fees, and the cost increase due to recent supply and demand conundrums. I think if it was cheaper for us to import it directly to ourselves then you and I both would have been doing that. The retailer has to swallow those fees and then pass it on to us, while still having a profit margin. Even at wholesale prices, I think it’s still slicing it pretty thin. Plus, retailers have overhead - rent, staff, utilities, website management, etc. I would like cheaper prices too but I think the economy is a big machine with multiple layers of concern adding to it at every step.
I wish it was cheaper too. After looking at the most recent Cabelas prices I can now see why some people don’t put enough rounds down range to be able to shoot well. It’s hard to pay for it. Handloading saves a bit but that too is rapidly rising.
 
Would buying some old tooling from a ex combloc country be an option? I gotta assume theres one turnkey factory sitting there still. Or enough pieces and parts that we could be thrown together.and it would be cheaper technically. Would it be the pinacle of automation? No but it could be a start.
 
When a business list prices with bring your own brass?

Does that mean I have to bring clean and ready to be reloaded? Or fired brass from the range to make a swap for there future reloading?
 
Boogerchew I'm confused, what part of the remanufactured ammunition would the "re" part be if not the brass???
"Most are selling remanufactured ammunition and not even using new cases"
 
BoogerChew said:
That's what I meant. We are getting new ammunition from the US ir we get more expensive reloaded ammunition from Canada.
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Hard to disagree with you BoogerChew.

Some Canadian companies are still acting like this is 1990s and we can't see how cheaper X,Y,Z is in U.S. Think about it, when you can buy X,Y,Z in U.S cheaper even with 33% exchange rate, credit card fees, shipping and import taxes.... something is seriously wrong.
 
X metal ammunition in Quebec is not operational currently. I spoke to the owner last week and he has no intentions of operating currently. He said he may restart once all this settles down as he can't get staff due to the COVID.
 
I will rarely spend more on an identical product simply because its Canadian.

If you cant do it cheaper, Do it better. If you cant win on price, win on service.

My company manufactures and does business on both sides of the border and I can tell you that our universal health care, government funded pensions, social safety nets, maternity leaves, minimum wages, and on and on and on has a cost and it makes it virtually impossible to be lowest cost on anything manufacturing related. Even with a 30% discount on exchange rate we are still too expensive. In the manufacturing world you are competing with every metal and tool and die shop in the world where people work for pennies. In skme US states Minimum wage is less than half what it is here and they pay no state tax. We gave up trying to be cheapest a decade ago.

When you look accross the Canadian Firearms industry you see the most successful Canadian companies are succeeding by being the best at what they do, not by being lowest cost.

I dont think there is a point to derailing the thread talking about the economic consequences of supporting uncompetitive companies or industries. Perhaps the OP can explain in someway how the Canadian ammo makers are turning out a better product.

Or, if things unfold as you predict where high exchange rate and reduced US exports eliminate the competition, then maybe Canadians will pay the higher price out of a lack of options and makers do nothing different and will soon be cheaper because of global economic forces.

Ah the joys and of the free market enterprise.
 
Just to update everyone, I was talking to some of my contacts today. It seems like the only ammunition that "may" be imported into Canada in the next 6 - 9 months may be PMC from Korea. Everyone I am talking to in my industry in the USA is saying that they are back ordered until at least 4th quarter 2020 on all components, and that may push into 2021 based on how this situation continues to evolve.

The order in which things are dealt with will allow you to extrapolate a bit of a timeline on when you may see reasonably priced components come back into Canada.

US Military
US LEO / Government Agencies
US Tier one OEM Commercial (Federal, Winchester, Etc.)
US Tier two OEM (Grind Hard ammo as an example)
US Remanufactuers
US Consumer Reloaders

We will see ammunition coming back into Canada consistently between tier two manufactures and US remanufacturers. Once US consumer reloaders have a steady supply of components, they will look back to export markets.
 
I buy all of my shotgun ammunition from Canadian manufacturers excessively. Score and Challenger make very good quality shot gun ammunition.
 
Don't worry about making money. I'm just getting into the reloading game and I have BIG plans! 9mm, 556, 308, 300 blackout. I will support you!
 
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