Large Pistol Primers. Are there any manufacturers in the USA that make large pistol primers?

CCI , Federal , Winchester

the big 3

was the big 4 with Remington , not sure what their status is yet if they are back online


it is really like the big 2 CCI and Federal and now Rem are one and WIN is the other after they divided up Remington.

non US primers

S&B / CZ were being imported but that stopped when they had an explosion in their plant in Czech republic about 2015
https://www.outdoorhub.com/news/201...on-sellier-bellot-factory-leaves-3-dead/

Nobel Sport (Italy) was importing 209 primers , but only 209 I think they are still importing , I just haven't seen any in a while

RWS only imports percussion caps that I know of

Armscor of the Philippines makes primers , ammo , brass and bullets but only appears to import brass , bullets and loaded ammo

Winchester is the only one that makes everything stateside from what I’ve gathered. The others are importing materials which is slowing things down.

Rumor has it that a few of the large ammo makers outside of those under the VISTA umbrella are going in to the primer making business too. Two names I hear popping up are Sig Saur and Hornady. There may be others, but the central theme of these rumors is these folks have grown frustrated by dependence on VISTA for their primers.

Flip side of the argument against such investment is the short term gain doesn't warrant the long term pain. Not profitable in the long run. But if the rumors of all the back orders for ammo are true (Hornady website says they have 2 years of ammo back orders to fill just to catch up), it would seem there actually is room for more primer capacity. So not sure the bad investment theory holds water. Out of a total investment in an ammo plant of the type Sig Saur has in Arkansas, the addition of primers would seem to be a small part of it. Certainly not living up to potential without them.

Also, does anyone have a handle on the actual percentage that reloading fills in the US ammo market? What percentage of ammo used are reloads?

Out of 100 primers consumed, how many would typically go to reloaders on an annual basis?

no exact numbers but primers to private reloading is tiny no matter how big we think we are

with a lot of the relaoders of the past having been shotgun shell reloaders for trap , they made it not worth your time to relaod for around 20 years and most people slowed or stopped reloading 12 and 20 with high price of led and low cost of loaded ammo.

competition shooting is up but even with that I would be surprised if 3 in 100 primers hit the private relaoding market as in those of us not having a class 6 ffl license to manufacture ammunition and buying in 1K boxes

there is a growing professional relaoding market but I would still guess they are small potatoes at maybe 10% or less of ammo on the shelf/web for sale

I think we definitely need greater diversification in the Primer market , right now primers are a real point of slow down in the system and you can only work 24/7 you just can't go faster when it comes to primers everything is limited by the quantity of priming compound you can have out and moving at one time.

can't speak for Hornady, but the Sig rumor has produced a lot of activity

I did read where Hornady in Grand Island NE is expanding their plant, so I hope they do step things up and make some primers.