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A Swedish start-up plans to tap into Europe’s soaring demand for explosives by setting up a new production facility for TNT, which it said will strengthen Nato countries’ security of supply.
Sweden Ballistics (Swebal) aims to produce more than 4,000 metric tons of TNT, used in many artillery shells, grenades and bombs, annually from the end of 2027. It said this would significantly boost European production, which is currently dominated by a single Polish company, leaving many of the region’s arms makers reliant on imports from Asia.
Europe’s limited production capacity for explosives and propellants has been exposed by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with defence contractors struggling to scale up output and replenish supplies used to support Ukraine’s war effort. Individual nations have added to the challenge by closely holding their stockpiles.
“We want to strengthen the resilience of Nato countries,” said Joakim Sjöblom, co-founder and chief executive of Swebal. Demand from ammunition manufacturers had been so strong that the company was talking to potential customers about providing “more than double” its planned output, he added.
Europe has also been struggling to source nitrocellulose — an explosive propellant also known as “guncotton” — which drives artillery munitions out of gun barrels.
The war in Ukraine “plus awareness that Europeans need to generate a capability for [a] sustained conventional war if they are to deter Russia in future, has focused more minds on ammunition production,” said Trevor Taylor from the Royal United Services Institute, a defence think-tank.
Poland’s Nitro-Chem, which declined to comment on the “volume and pace” of its production, is Europe’s only producer of TNT that meets Nato standards. The UK’s Chemring, for example, makes RDX and HMX, but not TNT.
Sjöblom said this left European manufacturers dependent on Asian suppliers and led to a growing sense of “urgency” among European policymakers about the need to promote self-sufficiency.
“The re-arming of Europe . . . is already forcing some components to be produced in Europe,” he told the Financial Times. “You cannot rely on Asian imports.”
Sjöblom added that Swebal’s facility would source materials from within a radius of 550km, with about 80 per cent of the supply chain concentrated around the Baltic Sea.
Nitro-Chem, part of Polish defence conglomerate PGZ, has played a key role in the country’s expansion of its domestic explosives manufacturing sector, winning a $310mn contract last month to provide a US army supplier with 18,000 tonnes of TNT.
Polish deputy defence minister Cezary Tomczyk welcomed the contract at the time as a sign of the growing maturity of the country’s industry, which had gone from “announcing that we are purchasing military equipment from the US” to being a supplier to that market.
But defence officials said more needs to be done to rope in the Polish chemical sector and help reduce the continent’s ammunition and explosives shortfall. In November Grupa Azoty, Poland’s largest and state-owned chemical company, agreed with PGZ to build an explosives factory to make nitrocellulose and propellants.
Europe is now largely dependent on Poland for domestic production of TNT, but “this will change in the coming years,” said Jan Marinov, who runs the defence projects at Prague-based Czechoslovak Group, or CSG, central Europe’s largest ammunition manufacturer.
CSG last year formed a joint venture with Greece’s state-owned Hellenic Defence Systems to overhaul a disused factory in Lavrio and use it to produce TNT and 155mm shells. CSG also recently acquired a German nitrocellulose plant, meaning that “we will achieve full vertical integration of large-calibre ammunition production,” Marinov said.
The US is also looking to shore up its own domestic production of TNT and recently announced plans for a facility in Kentucky.
Founded last year, Swebal raised “roughly €1mn” in its first funding round in November and was in talks with potential investors on a second one to help pay for machinery, Sjöblom said.
