I was asked this question just the other day and the short answer is no – it’s just fine. The reason it is discolored is that the brass is annealed in that area. This means the brass is heated and allowed to cool to remove stresses when it is being formed. If you’ve ever heated up a metal really hot with a blow torch, you may have seen it change color.
The brass is annealed right around where the neck is formed. The brass is discolored from the heat. This is 5.56 M855 ammo as I am sure some of you already know from the green tip.
Want to know the funny part? All ammo that is necked down is annealed in that area.
Commercial ammo is polished to be nice and shiny as buyers think that discoloration means it is defective or cheap. Military inspectors want the discoloration there so they know the cases were properly annealed during forming and aren’t going to crack.
Removing a process step should lower the cost and thus the price — but who knows how effective governments really are at negotiating pricing.
Summary
I shoot a lot of surplus 5.56 NATO ammo and find it just fine for my needs at the range. I don’t shoot it in my target rifles but it’s very cost effective otherwise.
If you’ve been on the fence because of that discoloration, don’t be. It’s just fine. The ammo is just fine — assuming it is a reputable brand and vendor of course.
I hope this helps you out.
Note, I have to buy all of my parts – nothing here was paid for by sponsors, etc. I do make a small amount if you click on an ad and buy something but that is it. You’re getting my real opinion on stuff.
If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.
Olin Corporation, who owns Winchester, annoinced they are buying Ammo Inc for $75 million on 1/21/25. The assets will become part of Winchester.
Apparently it is the brass shell case capabilties and 185,000 square foot production facility in Manitowoc, WI constructued in 2022.
At any rate, the whole press, release is here. I shot a few cases of Ammo Inc’s 10mm TMC ammo some years back and found it decent. They own Gunbroker so maybe they are going to focus more on that now.
I did see one comment that Ammo Inc has to restate their financials due to some problems with the accounting. Click here.
S&B is one of the world’s largest ammunition companies and has changed hands a few times. In December 2023, Colt CZ announced it would acquire 100% of Sellier & Bellot from CBC of Brazil. for $703 million, excluding Sellier & Bellot’s net debt. The deal included cash and new Colt CZ common stock. It’s my understanding the deal closed in May 2024.
Okay, being an American, I saw “Colt” and immediately wondered if there was a relationship with the traditional Colt firearms brand in the US. As you often see in the firearms / defense industry, owners may come and go but established brand names rarely die and Samuel Colt’s name and brand continue to live on.
The brands continue to move around. Colt is owned by CZ who changed the holding company’s name to “Colt CZ”. They bought S&B in May 2024. So, Colt CZ has a formidable lineup and it’s always interesting to see “who owns whom” at a given time.
If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.
I am a huge fan of S&B ammo, factory tour videos and Ian McCollum’s Forgotten Weapons series (If you don’t know about Ian, click here for his website and here for his Youtube channel.) So, when he posted this morning about his tour of the S&B facility in Vlašim, in the Czech Republic, I knew I had to watch it.
As usual, Ian does a great job. Larry Vickers created a video back in 2018 of his tour and it was interesting to compare what Larry saw six-plus years ago to what Ian just saw.
I learned three new things watching Ian’s video:
Literally every single round that ships from S&B is QC inspected at each step of manufacturing through various computerized methods – imaging, weight, etc. Literally, every single round – not samples – must pass their quality checks. No wonder their quality is so good.
It takes 2-3 days to change over from one to another caliber so they want long production runs to absorb all the setup costs. I can only imagine the fixed costs are enormous too. A facility like you see in the video costs millions and millions of dollars.
Civilian and military ammo both have their necks annealed. The only difference is that the military inspects want to be able to see that it happened whereas commercial/private shooters view seeing the discolored neck as defective so additional polishing is done to remove it. Other than the additional polishing – the process is the same.
The 100% QC capabilities are stunning. This machine will kick out any case that video inspection deems as being deffective. Literally every single case! All of my old school sampling and inspection methods from 30+ years ago sure seems dated now.
So, with no further to-do, here’s Ian’s S&B factory tour video:
Summary
This is S&B factory tour video is another great production by Ian. I have shot S&B for years – espectially 9mm, 10mm and .45ACP plus some .300 Win Mag and .338 Lapua and they continue to impress me.
I hope you find this interesting also.
Note: All screen shots are from Ian’s video and remain his property.
If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.
Folks, Palmetto State Armory (PSA) has an interesting Daily Deal going on right now. They have 1,500 rounds of Swiss P Defense Blackround 9mm NATO ammo. Two reasons you should care: First, this is the NATO load which is slightly hotter than 9mm Luger – SAAMI pressure for 9mm Luger is 35,000 PSI and Nato is 36,500 PSI with approximatly 1,1100 FPS for 115gr 9mm Luger and 1,250+ FPS for the 124gr 9mm NATO — It all means more energy. Second, the maker is Swiss P Defense of Switzerland who is truly a top notch ammo maker. If you are even considering picking up some 9mm ammo that will work good in a pistol, PCC or sub-gun, I’d recommend you check this out.
If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.
I was surfing around and dropped by Youtube to see what new videos would pop up and there was a four day old video that was a tour of the Remington Ammunition plant. Okay, the tour of an ammo plant always catches my eye but it got me to thinking also. I knew that Remington declared bankruptcy in July 2020 and was bought by Vista Outdoor. I also knew Vista Outdoor owned a number of brands including Federal but what dawned on me was that I really didn’t know much about Vista. Well, when I have a gap like that, I do some digging and a blog post emerges.
First, here’s the cool plant tour video that kicked this all off:
What happened to Remington in the first place?
Well, rather than start with their founding in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington, let’s jump ahead to 2007. Remington was an iconic firm by that time and due to a string of circumstances including declining sales and reputational damage, they were acquired by Cerebus Capital Management. Remington was already millions of dollars in debt but went ahead and bought Marlin Firearms and Advanced Armament Corporation (AAC) – the suppressor company.
Now if you look back on it, a lot of innovation had ceased and they were milking existing product designs. They were involved in litigation, still not making money and declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2020. As a result, their assets went up for sale. Remington outdoor was split up and sold off piecemeal.
Remington Arms and non-Marlin firearms were sold off to the Roundhill Group. Remington’s ammunition business was sold to Vista Outdoor. I did some quick reading and don’t know much about Roundhill but really the focus of today’s post is Vista so let’s go there.
Vista Outdoors Started As ATK Sporting Products
Well, if we wind back the clock to 1990, a defense company called Alliant Techsystems (ATK) was spun out from Honeywell. ATK had supplied products to the defense industry for close to 50 years at that point.
In 2001 they bought Hercules Aerospace who also made Hercules brand gun power. and decided to enter the ammunition business and bought Blount Industries. The move made them the largest ammunition maker in the United States.
Bear in mind ATK was a big firm and making launch systems also – we are not talking about a small organization, Also in 2001 they acquired Thiokol who made the solid rocket boosters for NASA’s space shuttle program. I’m not going to detail the defense group but they were making missles, the Bushmaster cannon and more.
In 2012 the Army selected ATK to operate the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant (LCAAP) that Remington built in 1941. Renovations were made and quality was improved.
To give you an idea of how big the Sporting Group was – here is a list of the brands they were producing: Allant Powder, Blackhawk, Bolle Bushnell, CCI, Cebe, Champion Targets, Federal Premium Ammunition, Final Approach, Gold Tip Arrows, Hoppes, Outers, Primos, RCBS, Savage Arms, Serengeti, Speer, Uncle Mike’s, and Weaver Optics. That’s quite a spectrum – everything from ammo to sunglasses.
In 2014 ATK decided to split into two companies. Aerospace and defense groups would be merged into Orbital Sciences Corporation. The sporting products group was split off to create Vista Outdoor. The creatiion of the two was completed on February 20, 2015.
Vista was a public company from the start and subject to the pressures of the market to make money, deal with debt, promote and protect the brands it held, etc.
In 2018 they sold off the eyewear brands of Bolle, Cebe and Serengeti.
In 2019 they sold off Savage and Stevens Arms to a group of investors led by the Savage management team.
In 2020 they bought the Remington ammunition and accessory assets. This included the ammunition plant in Lonoke, AR, for $81 million.
How big is Vista Outdoor (stock symbol VSTO)? Well, in terms of sales, they are at $3.04 billion USD in 2022, up 36.08% from the previous year. Net income is positive at $473,23 million up 77.9% from 2021.
Vista does plan on splitting the company into two parts – Outdoor Products and Sporting Products, both of which will be publicly traded.
Outdoor products will include the brands: Bell, Bushnell, Bushnell Golf, CamelBak, Camp Chef, Foresight Sports, Giro, Hoppes, QuietKat, Stone Glacier and others – they have a ton actually so click here for the
Sporting products will include the ammunition brands: CCI, Estate Cartrdige, Federal, Hevi-Shot, Remington, and Speer
As a quick side comment – I didn’t realize how many sporting optics brands that Vista owned until researching this post: Bushnell, Redfield, Simmons, Tasco and Weaver.
In terms of what is new, the company’s CEO, Chris Metz was asked to resign by the board on February 1, 2023, due to a loss of confidence in his leadership. They say the parting was in good terms but regardless of how you look at it, they fired him and there aren’t public details. The firm’s CFO left back in November 2022 so there is some movement going on.
Gary McArthur, a board member, has been appointed interim CEO in the meantime until a permanent CEO is found.
So, that’s Vista Outdoor in a nutshell. Another big holding company with a ton of brands. They invested in bringing the Remington ammunition factory in Lonoke, AR, back up to speed and it is producing now. That’s good.
What will happen with the planned splitting up of the company and long-term plans, it is hard to say. When you look at the the stock price over the past year, it has fallen but it didn’t plummet with Metz’s departure so time will tell. Hopefully good things will continue to happen.
If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.
The short answer is “yes” and I think the forecast bears some explaining. First, there was massive demand due to civil unrest and Biden winning the presidency making people fearful of more gun control via regulations and executive orders. Second, there was a general concern about COVID and self-defense due to various “defund the police” movements at the same time that crime was increasing due to liberal policies reducing prosecution and incarceration. These factors all pushed existing gun owners to buy both more firearms and ammunition while at the same time creating a very definite increase in new first-time gun owners. In short, this all put demand for ammunition through the roof.
Why did prices increase?
While demand was increasing, factories, suppliers and distribution firms were all sorely short-staffed due to COVID. Making this even worse was the government paying people to stay home which continues to affect staffing levels – a lot of people simply do not want to work. The politically correct term many use is “we are having supply chain issues” meaning the vendor you want to buy from is having a hard time finding raw materials or components causing delayed shipments, higher prices and general uncertainty about what will happen next.
If we look at these two forces coming togeter – increasing demand and shrinking supply, prices went up and availability went down. For a brief while, you could not even find 9×19/9mm Luger FMJ range ammo unless you were willing to pay $0.40/round or more of sites like Gunbroker.
Why are prices going down?
Now over the past year, what has happened? Prices for 9mm ammo have steadily gone down and now dipped well below $.030/round and will continue downwards. Now why can I say that? We’re going to look at factors influencing demand and supply at this point.
Demand Side Factors
These are things that happened to influence whether people buy ammo or not:
First, inflation – the increase in prices you pay – is hitting everyone hard. People are making hard decisions about whether to buy ammo, food, gas, fix something at home, repair the car … in these scenarios, ammo is often put on hold because you can’t drive or eat a case of ammo. This is causing demand to go down.
Second, panic buying is dropping. Gun owners can only panic buy for so long and then they either run out of money to spend or they feel they have enough / are safe enough and then stop. Again, this causes demand to go down.
Third, all things being equal, if ammo costs you a fortune, are you going to frivolously go and shoot tons of ammo at the range or are you going to conserve it a bit more? Or to put it differently, are you going to waste a case of ammo that cost you $300-400 just to have fun or will you maybe shoot a bit less and save the rest for another day? A lot of folks will respond with the latter and not shoot more than is necessary. Again, this causes demand to go down.
Supply Side Factors
Now let’s look at the supply side – what influences groups to sell ammo:
First, the major US ammo makers are running their plants non-stop trying to make ammo. For example, Vista Outdoor, the holding company who owns CCI, Federal and Speer bought the Remington ammunition plant and brought it back online and has it up to speed now. Why are these groups doing this? Well, they exist to make a profit and when prices are high, they can afford to invest to do just that – to make money. This is also why Palmetto State Armory has spent over $100 million to bring their AAC ammo plant on-line – to make money. So what does all of this do – these producer actions increase the supply of ammo in the market.
Second, not only did the bigger firms try to produce more but lots of smaller firms either started or are trying to scale up to to meet demand and make money. Some examples include Ammo Inc , Frontier, Gorilla and Sergeant Major. The result is an increase in the supply of ammo.
What else is going on? Well, importers are bringing in tons of ammo (literally). This includes established brands like Aguila, Eley, Fiocchi, IMI Systems, Lapua, MagTech, Norma, MEN, PMC, S&B, brands of ammo I have never heard of before such as Belom, DRZ, STV Scorpio and Turan. The increased prices created an opportunity that made it worth the time and investment needed for foreign suppliers to make and sell the ammo as well as for importers to bring it in by the container load and this all increases supply.
Fourth on the list, I notice vendors are finally advertising they have primers, powders and other reloading components back in stock. For ammo buyers who want to reload, or get back into reloading, they can which takes some buyers for finished ammo out of the market. This factor is both supply and demand related in a sense so I am just sticking it here.
The Result
In short, demand is contracting/decreasing and supply is expanding/increasing. When this happens, prices go down. To put it simply, you have more ammo chasing fewer buyers and so the sellers begin to compete on the basis of price – whether it is lowering the price of the ammo itself, throwing in free shipping or some per bundle “buy this ammo and get two free magazines” or even some combination.
As of my writing this post, I checked Ammoseek.com and the cheapest 9mm 115gr FMJ ammo in case quantity (meaning 1,000 rounds) is $0.24/round and the most expensive is $0.60/round — the $0.60 listing is from a single seller who appears to be premium pricing their Tula steel case. There’s quite a spectrum of prices for sure – quite a few sellers are offering sup $0.30 pricing. Far from its peak price but also far from it’s bottom before all of this happened.
By the way, due to its popularity, I have watched the pricing of 9mm FMJ case lots for a while now to judge how things are going. When you get into the unique wildcat calibers or obsolete/hard-to-find calibers they are different and my prediction doesn’t necessarily apply.
Government Regulation Risk
At this point, there doesn’t seem to be a huge risk of the government introducing regulations that impact the free market in terms of ammo. The ATF does have a new head and, in general, the current administration openly despises both gun owners and the firearms industry but they don’t have a ton of support for gun control at the moment. Granted they have more after all the public shootings as of late but hopefully it will not increase.
So this is my riskiest part of the prediction – at least through the mid-term elections the politicians and the bureaucrats they control are not going to want to rock the boat or they are apt to put some of the more conservative democrats from areas with large populations with firearms at risk of re-election. There are gun owners in all political parties at this point.
Conclusion
To sum it up, demand has shrunk and supply has increased. Vendors are starting to compete on the basis of price and this is driving down prices, at least for popular calibers, across the board.
We’ll see how my forecast holds up and I feel pretty confident about it.
Note, I have to buy all of my parts – nothing here was paid for by sponsors, etc. I do make a small amount if you click on an ad and buy something but that is it. You’re getting my real opinion on stuff.
If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.
In 2021, there were reports that Palmetto State Armory (PSA) was going to start producing their own ammo. For those of you who don’t know PSA, they started with discounted AR parts and sporting goods stores and grew rapidly now producing a variety of platforms including AK rifles and pistols and a Glock 19 compatible pistol known as the Dagger.
At any rate, the ammunition market could not keep up with demand starting with the fear of what would happen when Biden took office, the pandemic, etc. When and where there is unmet demand there is potential opportunity and that is what PSA went after. PSA is investing in a new ammo plant being built in Columbia, SC, with plans for it to be fully operational in 2023 using the letters AAC – America’s Ammo Company.
Uh… wait … isn’t there already Advanced Armament Corporation (AAC) using a similar logo? Why yes, there was. Emphasis on “was”. You see, AAC was a brand owned by Vista along with Remington. When Vista tanked, the parent company of PSA, JJE Capital, bought them so AAC is a sister company to PSA.
JJE Capital also now owns DPMS Panther Arms, Stormlake, AAC, H&R and Parker Brands. The JJE website doesn’t mention those but I read them in another post about the sell-off of Vista. JJE does identify PSA Defense (safety and training), Palmetto State Armory (PSA), and Palmetto Outdoors Shooting Facility.
11/12/22 Update – PSA has a new sister company – Caliber Coffee. Plus there is an insurance company that they’ve had for a while that I overlooked – Right to Bear – that sells carry/self-defense insurance.
Okay, returning to Advanced Armament Corporation’s fate: Going forward AAC was split into two divisions – AAC suppressors and firearms (which are to be resurrected) and then AAC Ammo adopted the slogan “America’s Ammo Company”.
Some of the items have one to four reviews – it’s all new after all and they are largely scoring 4-5 starts. One reviewer criticized the quality of the .223 (.224) 55gr bullets/projectiles and said accuracy suffered.
I think it’s good for all of us that PSA/JJE has entered the ammunition market. There was a blog post back in October 2021 that they had spent $100 million on starting up ammunition production including primers up to that point – I’ve not seen a total amount referenced. Clearly they are just getting started and it will very interesting to see how they do over time as they come up to full production.
All photos are the property of Palmetto State Armory.
Note, I have to buy all of my parts – nothing here was paid for by sponsors, etc. I do make a small amount if you click on an ad and buy something but that is it. You’re getting my real opinion on stuff.
If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.
