Explosion at Hornady - 1 dead, 2 injured
Posted: October 14th, 2023, 8:48 am
UPDATE: Explosion confirmed to have been in the primer mixing section
https://nebraska.tv/news/local/update-e ... randisland
Part of the reason primers are a choke point in the ammo components supply chain is that primer manufacturing is the most expensive AND dangerous part of centerfire production. And unlike just adding more shifts to stampers and punches to churn out more brass casings and projectiles,...the individuals who don the hazmat suits and actually walk into the primer compound magazines to make them are not quickly or easily trained up and reproduced to have greater production. Accidents like this one are the VERY REASON only one employee at a time is ever actively at work in the priming room of any ammunition manufacturer anywhere. The risk of multiple fatalities is too high. And because priming is a single person activity, the industry standard is that to increase primer production, an entirely new and separate priming center (usually a detached free-standing building) must be constructed. And of course, to prevent sympathetic detonation of the other priming center or other parts of the plant, priming centers are usually spread out from the rest of the operation.
What this means is that, depending on how severe the blast was and how much damage it did to the priming center's equipment, Hornady will need to buy outside primer supply for the immediate production schedule. Even if the priming center is relatively undamaged and can resume operations,...trained personnel qualified to do this dangerous job aren't necessarily standing in line to be plucked from the rest of the plant's staff and simply inserted in that function like a replaceable cog in the machine. This is why primers dried up during the pandemic, when primer room employees were out sick or died.