NAGR Gun Rights Blog

While supplies of ammunition have been in short supply, reloading supplies have been even harder to find.

Sinclair International, a provier of reloading supplies, has taken to its blog to address the reloading components shortage.

We have had a lot of concerned customers calling to ask about primer availability. Actually, our lines have been flooded with calls regarding the availability of primers as well as the availability of other components. The easiest and quickest way to check on availability is through our new website, whether you plan on phoning an order in, ordering off the web, or using some other means. The following is our view on the current primer situation. Basically, there has been a two-pronged drain on primer supplies for the reloading market.

The first driving force has been the huge demand for loaded ammunition through 2008 and continuing into 2009. The large primer manufacturers like ATK (which would include Federal and CCI), Winchester, and Remington are directing the majority of their primers into loaded ammunition. Ammunition sales are going through the roof as individuals stock up because of political concerns. The huge consumer demand for ammo is in addition to the demand from law enforcement agencies and our military to re-supply their own inventories. I know that smaller ammunition manufacturers have been impacted drastically by the primer shortage since their demands are higher than normal for primers that they have to obtain through Federal, CCI, Winchester, Remington, etc. Many of these smaller manufacturers have had to go to other sources to get quality primers. Because of this situation, some of them cannot keep up with their own ammunition production. Unfortunately, these smaller ammo makers can’t control their own destiny since they don’t have the capacity or tooling to make primers.

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The manufacturers are trying to react as best as they can, but their primary driving force is to keep a steady supply of primers going to the ammunition plants because they generate more revenue through this output than they do through the reloading market. A guy from CCI called the other day to order some items from us for his own reloading, and he reported that CCI has been running 24/7 and is still falling behind. They are adding two machines to their line to increase production (I don’t know what percentage gain this will give them). Federal told us a couple of weeks ago to not be surprised if we don’t see many primers from them until the end of 2009.

This is what we know as of today. Our current situation at Sinclair is that we are out of primers but are expecting some Wolf primers of all types sometime in June. We get a few Winchester primers every once and awhile but it might only be 30K to 50K at a time.