Hard-to-find gunpowder is hindering Europe’s scramble to provide hundreds of thousands of shells for Ukraine’s defensive effort against Russian, with solutions only starting to emerge.
“We have all become aware of the need to face up to the scarcity of some components, especially gunpowders,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday after a gathering of Kyiv’s allies in Paris. “Powder is really what’s lacking today,” he added.
In a video on its website, German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall illustrates stackable propellant cylinders filled with explosive pellets slotting in behind a shell in the breech of a cannon. Europe counts a very small number of powder producers, said Jean-Paul Maulny, deputy director of France’s Institute for International and Strategic Relations.
They include firms like Eurenco, with operations in France, Belgium and Sweden, and Nitrochemie, majority-owned by Rheinmetall, with sites in Germany and Switzerland. With many countries pushing to bring production home, France “is in the process of relocating part of Eurenco’s production to Bourges” around 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Paris, Maulny said.—AFP
