But, there are deeper reasons too to do with the nature of explosives manufacturing and defence industry ownership. The place that makes Pyrodex aside, the US has only one propellants factory left - the former Olin Corp ball powder maker, now called St. Marks Powder Co. near the the town of St. Marks FLA. Like every other significant powder manufacturer it's one cog in a multinational's operation. in this case General Dynamics Ordnance division.
St. Marks makes all Hodgdon's 'spherical' grade powders including some pistol grades like Titegroup that you might not think of as 'ball'. St. Marks has a good steady base operation in that it has supplied the majority of propellants to Uncle Sam for his smallarms ammo for over half a century. When the US adopted the 7.62mm M80 in the 1950s, it took a decision to only use ball powders, and that applies today right through the 5.56mm era, even though the former DuPont corporation developed the propellants for the original .223 Rem / 5.56mm and the AR-15 was built around the pressures they produced.
All Hodgdon extruded powders come from Thales / ADI in Australia and the partnership has worked out VERY well for all parties. The Hogdon range has doubled - at least! - since I started handloading, and the pair have been very innovative in improving powder characteristics and behaviours, such as the Xtreme temperature tolerance. BUT ... remember that handloaders are small beer to propellants manufacturers whose main business is supplying powders in bulk to the ammunition manufacturers, especially for military orders. Moreover, 'canister powders' mean a lot of extra work and expense to the manufacturer, packager / distributor as (unlike the bulk commercial orders) the burning characteristics must be kept the same or close from lot to lot if necessary by blending the outputs of different factory production lots. 1lb / 8lb packaging and the high costs of distributing small quantities of hazardous materials add enormously to workloads and costs.
Finally though, there is the SAFETY aspect. Nobody makes extruded (stick) powders in the US and haven't done so for many years, likewise the UK and many other western countries. IMR powders are mostly made in Canada, Alliant rifle powders in either Sweden (Bofors) or Switzerland (Nitro-Chemie). Many old plants went back to WW1 were out of date, but worse built close to villages and towns that expanded throughout the 20th century until their suburbs ran up to the explosive factories' boundaries. As safety rules were tightened, it was deemed totally inappropriate to have people living so close to dangerous manufacturing activities - the houses didn't go, the manufacturers did!
Then ... ball powder manufacture is inherently safe until its final stages when the little balls are precipitated out of a solution in a still. Until that point, the ingredients are made up in nonflammable, nonexplosive water based slurries and piped from one process to another. Extruded powders on the other hand start out by nitrating wood or cotton fibres producing 'guncotton' a fierce, unstable, and violent explosive. The remainder of the processes involve altering the explosive's chemical structure and burning characteristics by adding and extracting solvents or other inflammable / explosive agents which are themselves dangerous. The result is that this type of powder is more expensive and dangerous to make, and modern health and safety rules virtually rule out its manufacture in many countries. A contact in the US powder business once told me that your EPA requirements on making such powders haven't banned it, just made it so expensive and restrictive that you'd never sell a pound of US made extruded powder.
There is a final, and VERY important factor. Powders were mostly made in government plants outside of the US, and even here they were made by two or three large combines (primarily Olin and DuPont) who were very close to the military procurement people. Since the 1980s, all western governments have got out of the arms manufacturing business and where private suppliers were previously used moved to much more distant arms-length arrangements with completely open tendering etc. The view is that 'the free market will supply the best deal'. The trouble is that demand changes dramatically in this field from year to year depending on whether you're fighting a war of not, and private companies won't keep large amounts of spare capacity standing by for purely 'strategic reasons'. This is a major reason for the periodic serious shortages of some components over the last 20 years, especially primers. Right now, government demand is on the way down as the UK, USA, and NATO pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq so supplies should be plentiful, but they're not for two reasons.
First, ammunition manufacturing capacity has been reduced too much by private companies (or not increased enough to take the place of closed government factories), hence the recent Bulletin story about Remington Arms' huge expansion of its Lonoke AR facility. Second, and more important, the panic buying and hoarding that's going on after the Sandy Hook school shootings. This is the second such event in recent years, the first being fears that the newly elected President Barak Obama would introduce gun ownership and handloading controls after his initial inauguration four/five years ago. No suppliers irrespective of where they're situated, whether in downtown Burbank or Outer Mongolia could cope with the panicked demand that good old American Joe Shooting Public has created here out of his/her own fears. Here's what the Forum Boss wrote after speaking to major suppliers Brunos recently ...............................
