The last stages of gunpowder manufacture at Nitrochemie Aschau look a bit like making pasta. A mass of fibers is squeezed through rollers until it is flat and gelatinous, which is then coiled tightly by hand and fed through a press that squeezes it into a thick cord. Finally, it is passed through a matrix that cuts it into pellets, each measured to within a hundredth of a millimeter.
It is a surprisingly manual process. "You cannot simply put large amounts of explosive materials onto a conveyor belt, no one would want that,” said Oliver Becker, senior vice president of operations at the site, which sprawls across 90 hectares of Bavarian countryside near Munich.
Nitrochemie Aschau is a subsidiary of the German defense giant Rheinmetall. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the factory has increased production capacity by 60% and is building new facilities to add another over 40% by mid-2025. It has hired around 300 people, picking up workers from the struggling automotive and chemicals sector to bolster its workforce so it can keep production running 24/7, and help meet Europe’s surging demand for ammunition.
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