There is an explosive flaw in the plan to rearm Ukraine

Read more of our recent coverage of the Ukraine war

The end of the cold war sent demand for weapons plummeting, and forced many European explosive manufacturers to scale back operations, merge or simply shut up shop. Britain, for example, closed its last explosives plant in 2008. Europe’s last major producer of TNT is located in northern Poland. Elsewhere, many government-owned facilities were either privatised or mothballed. For decades their production has been calibrated for peacetime efficiency, not industrial-scale output, notes Johann Höcherl, a professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. As a result, there is very little slack left in the supply chain to meet surging demand.

Take the explosives that go into the main charge of an artillery round or missile. Only a handful of companies still produce NATO-standard high-energy materials. One is Chemring Nobel, which occupies a sprawling plant in Saetre, Norway. Another is France’s EURENCO, which runs a similarly huge facility in Karlskoga, Sweden. Both firms’ order books have swelled since Russia’s invasion. EURENCO’s is chock-full until 2030 and Chemring’s Saetre plant is running at full tilt. Tim Lawrenson of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank, argues that turning mothballed plants back on will take time, given the need to retool and refurbish facilities.

Enticed by the ASAP subsidies, companies are pouring money into expanding capacity. But one industry insider notes that building a plant from scratch can take from three to seven years. A case in point: Rheinmetall, an ammunition provider, is building an explosives complex in Hungary; yet production will only start in 2027. A thicket of safety and environmental regulations can also impede expansion of capacity, says Christian Mölling of the German Council on Foreign Relations, another think-tank.

Explosive makers also face their own supply-side squeezes. One is an industry-wide shortage of skilled workers; grizzled engineers are retiring and few young people fancy handling explosives for a graduate job, says Mr Höcherl. Supplies of critical raw materials, like chemical precursors, are also under strain. Sourcing nitric acid, a crucial ingredient of TNT, HMX and RDX—and also of nitrocellulose, the basis of most military propellants—can be particularly challenging. At the moment, nitric acid production goes largely towards fertilisers. But as fertiliser producers suffer from higher energy costs, explosive makers have had to grapple with tightening supply. There are also supply-chain vulnerabilities: cotton linters, a type of fibre that is another key ingredient in nitrocellulose, are mostly imported from China.

Amid these difficulties, some ammunition providers are looking further afield for their explosives. Reports indicate that Indian and Japanese explosive makers are filling some of the gap. Some experts worry that explosives from abroad are of lesser quality and could therefore damage equipment. The rhetoric from European governments is bullish and it is true that some progress is being made: EU-wide annual shell production is projected to reach at least 1.4m by the end of 2024, up from around 500,000 a year ago. When he laid the first brick for EURENCO’s propellant factory in Bergerac on April 11th French President Emmanuel Macron defended the performance of France’s “war economy”. The plant, he said, would open, in record time, by 2025. Yet as Russia’s summer offensive gets under way, that is not quick enough to help shell-starved Ukrainians.

© 2023, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com