Hodgdon Powder to close Goex Facility

Another hit to the reloading/black powder community. Hodgdon is closing the Goex facility "effective immediately."

This shouldn't affect smokeless powder to my knowledge, but this is a huge hit to the black powder market. Stock up if you find any!

That’s a shame!

That leaves what still available?

It's been years and years since I played with BP. I recall a Swiss brand.

Swiss is a big one. This is bad news. I'm set for a while, but the future does not look good.

Dang, my go to powder.

Does gov't have a roll in this via regulations I wonder?

Its legal and relatively cheap to produce your own. The good stuff is made with a ball mill. Need a place the ball mill can run where if it explodes no one will be injured. Skylighter.com is a good place for details and equipment

Shouldn't have to.

that is a shame

I think this is why the Goex plant is being shut down so quickly. They have had nothing but problems there with fires and explosions and other mishaps. I don't know if its because of incompetent workers/management or what.

The urgency in the closing leads me to believe Hodgdon is trying to wash its hands of the place and pawn it off on the next poor guy

Does this effect triple 7 powder?

Good question. I think those are manufactured in separate facilities so triple 7 should not be affected.

But who knows what all Hodgdon will do away with when they sell Goex

Yeah, I can see where a few accidental booms can discourage continued production. Wonder if it's a case of equipment wearing out, labor/training issues or what? Gets to the point in any operation where it costs more to fix a problem than to just scrap the whole deal.

Pretty much what happened at the Hercules plant in Bessemer near where I grew up. That last boom everyone knew was the last one as they were shutting it down.

BTW, had a hunting buddy that worked there. He wore a t-shirt that said, "be nice to me, I'm a welder in a dynamite factory".

Goex is the only domestic mfg of black powder and the foreign supplies are tied up in the port problems. There are potentially lean times ahead. A couple of things could happen to resolve the problem. Hodgen could decide to produce BP at another one of their North American facilities given that there is a robust market for the product in the US. WANO (Schuetzen) or Swiss or someone else could purchase Goex and operate the facility. We don't know why Hodgen decided to shutdown when BP users would pay significantly more given that Goex is the only powder currently available. It smells like the heavy hand of the BATFE but I have no info to support that kind of conspiracy theory. However; it is unusual for a company to shutdown so quickly in a market they dominate with significant upside price potential.

Or the 14 mii the feds are going to put into improvements.

One to keep in mind is the weather, just like what just happened with the hurricane, so they maybe looking to move to a different plant where they don’t have to worry so much about events like this and having shut downs.