For Europe’s war effort, the time has come for boom or bust. Specifically, it needs more boom. On Monday, Sir Keir Starmer trumpeted the UK’s £1.5 billion investment in six new munitions factories, creating over 1,000 jobs. But we are still miles behind Russia and the rest of Europe when it comes to ammunition.
Russia, with assistance from North Korea’s six explosives factories, currently produces over four million artillery shells per year. The European Union and the UK are still collectively trying to drag their production above one million combined. On the front line, this means Russia can fire 12,000 rounds per day, compared with around 7,000 fired by the Ukrainians, according to Ukrainian military figures,
BAE Systems announced last month that the UK will erect shipping containers at secret sites across the land, but each container will produce just 100 tonnes per year of RDX explosives. When you consider every 155mm artillery shell requires 11.3kg of explosive, that’s 9,000 shells worth from each shipping container – barely enough to match one day of production in Russia.
The main shortage isn’t shells or launchers, it’s the bang that goes in them.
Russia can produce 50,000 tonnes of TNT, the rest of Europe is able to access only 6,000 tonnes per year of locally produced TNT which comes from its one factory in Poland. Amazingly, half of that 12,000-tonne annual Polish output is already ring fenced by the US, with President Trump wavering on backing the Ukrainian war effort. The rest of Europe’s TNT stock has to be shipped from Asia which is open to delays, interference and supply chain issues.
Sweden, forced into sharper action by its proximity to Russia, is building Europe’s first new TNT factory in 30 years, with neighbouring Finland close behind with a similar facility. The Swedish facility at a site near Nora – 200km by road from Stockholm – will make TNT continuously 24hrs a day, producing 4,500 tonnes of Nato’s MIL-DTL-248D standard quality product.
Joakim Sjoblom is co-founder and CEO of Sweden Ballistics (SWEBAL) who are behind the plant. He says, ‘Our establishment is not the biggest one in the world but would equal 45 of those containers in the UK. We’re doing this to prevent any reliance on the American administration or import dependency from foreign nations, as well as to protect Europe, including the UK. We need every gram of TNT because we are all a long way from matching Russian capacity.’
Sweden’s geography is a disadvantage when it comes to Russia, but is a bonus when it comes to building munitions. It’s easier to build an explosives factory when there’s few people living nearby. Sweden has a population density of 26 people per square kilometre, compared to the UK’s 279 people per square kilometre. Another unnamed Baltic state was also planning to build a new TNT plant, but was apparently frustrated by the attempt to find a location close enough to the necessary resources, but far enough away from large groups of people.
Nora itself has 10,604 inhabitants, and its cobbled streets lead around one of Sweden’s best preserved wooden towns, much of which has existed since the 18th century. A TNT factory in a wooden town seems risky but Sjoblom insists that production is actually very safe. ‘Trinitrotoluene is called “the mother of all the explosives” because it’s a very stable compound by itself. So the risk of a non-intentional detonation is very low, you can have it on bumpy forest roads at the Ukraine fronts and it won’t ignite by itself. In an artillery shell, you have a primary charge, which is usually TNT or RDX, but then on top of that you have a small booster charge, which is the more sensitive explosive. TNT requires a booster to set off the detonation.’
The site will have limited impact on locals because it is not in the business of being seen or heard. It will be hidden behind a few hundred meters of thick forest in all directions, with lights and noise kept to almost zero – meaning residents won’t know much of what goes on there, bar an increase in heavier trucks. ‘We scaled our storage to make sure that we can run for three days without receiving new goods, meaning that we don’t need to have heavy transports over the weekends. So we allocated all of the logistics to work Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.’
The facility will run 24 hours per day, run by 50 employees. Material, machinery and production for the facility will be sourced within a radius of 550 kilometres, with 80 per cent of SWEBAL’s supply chain being concentrated around the Baltic Sea reducing any reliance on other nations. With machine processing, the TNT compound will already be washed and dried before any human interaction with it occurs, after which it is then granulated and packaged for distribution and delivered to a multitude of smaller sites to avoid one giant store of explosives.
The US meanwhile, are shoring up their own supply with a new factory in Kentucky, set to open in 2028. But with President Trump threatening to walk away from the conflict, there can be no reliance on unconditional US support.
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