Cartridge penalty
I have been in the cartridge supply and importation business for 33 years, so believe I have some knowledge of the market.
Eighteen months ago, there was a death warrant issued for lead cartridges circulated by many of the organisations purported to represent the countryside and country sports. The error they made was never consulting anybody connected with the manufacturing or importation of cartridges to find out whether their wish was feasible, and over what time-scale it would be feasible, if at all.
Then COVID arrived, causing many problems for the cartridge industry and others. Most of the past 18 months has been taken up with survival rather than studying an alternative to lead. I think in fairness to everybody, the five-year clock should be restarted from February 2022.
The next big blow was the National Game Dealers Association’s stated wish to buy game that has been shot with cartridges and bullets containing no lead. It is going to implement this policy by mid-2022. This is impossible from the cartridge suppliers’ point of view for a number of reasons. There is a worldwide shortage of steel, gunpowder, shotgun cartridge cases and metallic ammunition. Nobody knows how long this problem is going to continue, so it may be impossible to buy the materials to make the cartridges. From a manufacturing point of view it is not just [a case of] stop loading lead and start loading steel. The machinery has to be refurbished to cope with steel. Not only is this a great expense, it will also stop manufacturers from loading lead competition cartridges because the machines cannot do both.
Another problem is that people don’t want to use plastic wads, and to date plastic wads have had to be used with steel cartridges or barrel damage may occur. The manufacturers in many countries are developing eco wads for steel with various degrees of success, but to get these wads right will take time, which the industry isn’t being given.
All the organisations that are currently campaigning to do away with lead and plastic have asked for two very difficult things to be done at the same time. I am sure given time the manufacturers will come up with a solution, but it’s going to be at a high cost. Cartridges will inevitably continue to rise in price as the cost of the imports are rising and the machines will have to run at a much slower rate, which they already do when loading steel, and if you load eco wads they run even slower. This results in machines only producing 25% to 50% of their capacity, therefore increasing costs. The organisations are wrong when they
say mass production will decrease costs, as there is no way to make the machines faster given the parameters in which they will have to work.
Currently about 3% of cartridges sold are non-lead – most of these with plastic wads. If anyone can tell me where we are going to get the other 97% of cartridges required, I would like to know. I believe by next season, if plastic wads are to be accepted along with eco wads, it may be possible with early orders that 25% to 50% of the demand could be supplied.
This very sorry picture has not been explained to the sportsmen and women of this country who, in our opinion, have been badly let down by the organisations that they support and the game dealers that they sell to. N E Levett-Scrivener, chairman, Shooting Star, Suffolk