Equipment to commercially produce .22lr ammuntion

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armedaccountant

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I was talking about the ammo shortage with my boss yesterday and he had no idea about the shortage because he rarely shoots anymore. He asked me to look into what it takes to produce .22lr and see if it would be a viable option to invest in. Does anyone know where somebody could order the equipment needed to produce .22lr?

Please don't post about all the the other costs and licenses, etc that are required. I understand all of that. I just need to figure out the equipment cost at this point. This is not some crazy pipe dream. I am going to run a full business model for my boss. If it has a negative NPV I won't even show him the report. If it has a highly positive NPV I will give him the numbers and let him decide.
 
Regardless of the responses on here, I hope it works out for you. We are too much at the mercy of too few manufacturers (nothing against them). The more small manufacturers the better. I say small because CCI alone pumps out 4 million rounds of .22 daily. At least they did before the panic, not sure what their current production is at.
 
Bad idea.

All the major ammo manufactures have already ramped up production, and in some cases built additional factories to meet the present hording demand.

There are signs they are beginning to catch back up now.

Then one fine day, the ammo shortage will be over, a lot of folks will have horded more ammo then they can use the rest of their life, and the manufactures will be left with excess capacity and low sales again.

Your boss doesn't want to be 'that guy' with a multi-million dollar investment, and no customers.

Heads will roll, and it might be yours for even suggesting such a risky venture in these uncertain times.

rc
 
Conservative estimate; $1,000,000+

Land in property zoned area

Buildings large enough and meets zoning, fire and safety codes.

How much of the ammunition will you be manufacturing? Machine for drawing lead into bullets, machine to draw brass, machine to put the priming powder in the rim and the usual powder, bullet seating and crimping. Then you will will need to invest in packaging. By hand will be very slow.

Gunpowder and priming compound will need to be stored in separate location.

Money for contacts with suppliers, i.e. Brass, lead, powder, etc.

Training of employees, payroll and benefits.

Overhead...keeping the lights on, etc.

How quick of payback are you wanting?

Transportation and shipping system.

Lot of safety equipment and Q.C. Checks.

Insurance...lots of it.

Lawyers.

Forget a million dollars, try more like $3,000,000+.I agree that this is a sinking ship. Center fire ammo has already rebounded.

The best way to make a little money is to start with a lot of money.
 
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Rimfire is way more difficult to produce than centerfire. Many machines are needed: to drop the priming liquid, spin, dry, drop powder, seat and heel crimp the bullet. Ain't for amateurs like CF reloading. Joe
 
Like I said, I am not concerned with the facets of this at this point. I will explore those later, I know there are many things to consider. If it only cost 3,000,000 to set something like this up I would be surprised. I was expecting it to be much more than that. I am not emotionally invested in this. This is not something some buddies got in their head over a few beers.

My boss is a very successful businessman. He heard about a constrained product with extremely high demand and wanted to run the numbers. He considers new projects all the time, and like most of the business world most of them are rejected. I just am wondering where someone would procure the equipment. I hope I can shorten my search by asking on here.
 
Honestly, you aren't going to get useful info from a public internet forum. The vast vast vast majority of people don't even know what the various manufacturing steps are, let alone what the machines that do them are called, let alone who sells them or what they cost.

Your best bet, sadly, would be to look up experienced people in the industry on Linked-in or something, and see if they can at least point you to their machinery vendors. At worst, the machines themselves were custom built by Remington and are trade secrets. At best, the process is probably slightly-less intensive than setting up a rolling mill or large-scale sheet metal press operation; i.e. a nearly nation-level undertaking :D. But who knows? It could be as easy to set up a small-scale case-making shop as it is a whiskey micro-distillery (so not easy or cheap, but possible with some capital)

Boutique ammo would be the smart bet for a start up, if there is one. You can't compete with the big boys since you're paying off your machinery (even if you business plan is magically just as cheap/efficient as theirs), so don't. Instead, offer a product that doesn't compete with any other major player, and you might last long enough to establish yourself in the market where you can experiment with offerings with wider appeal. Low-capacity machinery will also be cheaper and smaller, though it will ultimately limit your scale, of course, and require addition/upgrading.

Whether it's super-match grade, or Zombie stuff, or 22LR that smells like strawberries when shot, so long as you aren't immediately going up against overwhelming force, you may make it despite the overwhelming odds ;)

TCB
 
Keep in mind the probable back-log in being able to purchase manufacturing equipment. It is very likely that rimfire ammo making equipment manufacturers are backlogged on orders as well.
 
Thanks for the link to Howell Machine. That is a good place to start. I also appreciate the Linked In idea.

To those who are saying this probably won't be a good idea, I agree. That is how must things turn out when you really look at them. If every idea had a positive NPV we would all be rich. But if we don't take a serious look at ideas how would we ever know.
 
FWIW, there are also Youtube videos of .22LR production lines in operation. That is no-where sufficient detail to garner the information necessary to draft a business plan, but it does give some grasp of the kind of infrastructure necessary to do such production.

Unless you managed to hire a .22LR production engineer with years of experience away from one of the others, I have my doubt that you would be producing match-grade ammunition for several years. Subtle learning curve about all the quirks of .22LR.

You might find it easier to find a European equipment manufacturer to supply the production machinery. They also have some terrific .22LR ammunition mfgrs (Eley, Lapua, etc).
 
I have a good friend who maintains the production equipment at Federal in Anoka MN.

They are currently producing about 42 million rounds of 22lr per week.
 
There are signs they are beginning to catch back up now.
Click to expand...

Yeah, cause my favorite two ammo websites, midwayusa and cabelas, have unlimited supplies. No limit either.
 
The business I founded many years ago had some custom-designed machinery to make several small metal parts. Each one of those machines cost us in excess of $100,000 for each part we made. Without divulging the whole thing, these machines used stamping presses coupled to vibratory feed equipment to feed small pieces into another machine that assembled the final part. It took about a year to refine the equipment so it worked as we designed it, and nearly constant maintenance and fine tuning to keep these machines running and producing more than a million pieces a year from each machine. No one is going to start up an ammunition manufacturing line with no trained personnel and no prior experience. Ain't gonna happen.
 
Would you please define "NPV"? I'm sure I'm not the only one that doesn't know what that means.

Acronyms are evil.
 
I would guess that most of the equipment will be completely custom made and probably a large part of it would be made outside the US. When I was in manufacturing(not ammo) we often had to put in calls to multiple equipment manufacturers and have their reps come out and give us the old "dog and pony".

A conservative estimate from me based SOLELY on equipment costs would be in the $3 million range. I have set up lines from scratch in other businesses and that is a reasonable figure for ALL NEW equipment.

I would start with the link someone already supplied and branch out from there.
 
Micro ammo shops

I doubt that I will ever see it but think it would be neat to see the rimfire ammo go the way of the micro brewery.
I didn't think I would ever see the micro brewery or distiller either but they are common here in the Midwest.
That could be the answer to seeing high quality rimfire return to our shores.:cool::cool::cool:
 
We are a year and an month + into this unprecedented shortage. I am still not convinced that the shortage will end anytime soon and any new manufacturers willing to step up to the plate would be most welcomed.

Since .22 LR seems to be the top of the list for shortages, I think starting a commercial .22lr ammo manufacturing company makes a lot of sense. Most importantly perhaps those "I can't find .22 ammo" threads might finally disappear by 2018 here on THR. Our local Meijer store has essentially been without handgun ammo since December 2012.

Here are the pluses.

There will always be a high demand for .22 LR.

.22 LR firearms don't seem to be on the gun grabber's radar as other firearms.

There are tons of .22 LR firearms out there all needing to be fed.

.22 LR firearms historically cost less than other firearms with others calibers and seem to be a good choice for first time gun owners.

.22 LR ammo takes up less space than other calibers. A few 50 round boxes can easily fit in a pants pocket which means more rounds to shoot with less to carry.

Good Luck
 
Thanks for all the replies. It will be a while before a decision is made. I will update this post when we decide yes or no. Do not get your hopes up, the majority of the time something like this is looked at(not just ammo but any new business venture) the answer is no.

Sorry for the abbreviation rondog. NPV as NoKY guy said means Net Present Value. In very simplified terms it is a way of looking at how much money will go into a project(expense) and how much money it will generate(revenue) and comparing that to a known a factor. For instance say I have an annuity that will generate 5% interest. Would I be better putting my money into the annuity and getting 5% or should i invest in this project.
 
Something else which you've probably already thought of, but I'll throw out as worthy of consideration:

A bit of industry research might illuminate whether any of the big players (like CCI/Blount) are expanding their rimfire production lines or building new ones now. And if the answer is no, why are they not? Another area of study would be the question of process scaleability. We know that center-fire ammo production is pretty easily scaleable from the kitchen table up to a national manufacturer's production lines. Rimfire ammo, though isn't so scaleable, and it isn't clear what the lower limit might be. In other words, how small a boutique supplier (in other words, lower investment) can you be and still make the numbers work?
 
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