Based on some discussions we've had recently today I picked up the phone and called someone I know at Vista Outdoors. One thing my career provided me was an unlimited list of contacts in the industry and once in a while I break out my black book.
We spent a little over an hour on the phone and I learned a whole, whole lot.
Some basics everyone is interested in.
As I suspected ammo sales nationwide are at record highs. Federal alone has seen a 40% increase in each of the last two years.
As I knew, when it comes to components he confirmed that yes, there's a priority list. First on that list is their own factory ammo, next comes their committed contract buyers for whom they also provide ammo. Following those are the huge vendors like Cabelas/BP, SW Midway, Brownell's and Midsouth.
The only thing that makes it to the shelves for reloading components are overruns and excess so from primers to powder to bullets reloaders are at the bottom of the pile. The one exception to that is the powders that none of their contracts or their own proprietary ammo uses but of course, those are the last to be produced.
Because of this huge increase in customer demand they have also changed how they produce. Until the last few years they'd run say 2 million rounds of a given bullet, at a given weight on a regular schedule, same with ammo that way there was a fairly constant supply of a broad range of ammo and components.
Due to demand however if they've got six million cases and one type of bullet in a given cartridge, they'll run six million of that specific combo because it's already sold no matter how much they produce. Once that run is done, they'll move to the next in that same line if they have the components, if not they'll retool and run something else until they run out of components and on and on.
Yes, there are some supply chain issues which can sometimes affect the production schedule but if they are lacking one thing they just produce something else and then will rescheduled that skipped run once the necessities are available.
Bad news. I was told not to expect any large runs of Magnum Primers to start showing up on the shelves for the next 12-18 months as they simply cannot produce them fast enough.
Good news, they are very soon going to be doubling their primer production capacity. They are however so far behind on contract orders for both loaded ammo and primers it's still likely to take at least 12 months to get caught up.
We covered me topics and some of these in a more in depth way so feel free to ask questions. If I have an answer I'll provide it.
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