Jason Vanderbrink is the president of the division that makes Federal, CCI, and Remington ammunition. He releases a video on Friday regarding the ammunition shortage. He tries to dispel some of the misinformation, rumors, and out-right lies.
I think he has got it right – the increase in new shooters has increased the demand for ammunition. When you add that, COVID-19, and the need to train new employees, it does account for a good deal of the shortage.
Given that few of us can find .22LR ammo in the market due to (hoarding, greater demand, an expanded market, or all of the above), I thought it might be interesting to at least see how the ammo is constructed. Jim Scoutten of Shooting USA visited the CCI ammunition plant in Lewiston, Idaho.
Turns out that it is a fairly complicated process from making the brass to filling the shells with priming compound to seating the bullets. While the plant makes 4 million rounds a day, that isn’t a lot when you think about it. Doing the math, that is 40,000 100-round boxes or 2,000 cases per day. Another way of looking at it is that this is approximately one case per Walmart in the United States daily.
by