🔹 Fuel of war. It is up to China whether Europe will produce ammunition

The war in Ukraine has caused a worldwide hunger for ammo. The massive demand for cartridges is draining warehouses, and plans to launch production – although ambitious – are not possible everywhere. The reason is prosaic: gunpowder is made from cotton, and only a few countries control its production. The largest producer is China.

Only five countries account for 75 percent of global cotton production. The world’s largest producers are China and India, followed by Brazil and the United States, and Australia closes the ranking. In the case of Beijing, we are talking about coverage of up to 70% of Europe’s demand.

Although cotton is commonly associated with the textile industry, it is also—along with petroleum—a fuel of war. Cotton primarily produces nitrocellulose, which—also known as guncotton—is the main ingredient of smokeless gunpowder.

One 5.45 × 39 mm cartridge, commonly used in AK family rifles, contains approximately 1.4 grams of powder. The 120 mm tank shell already has almost 6.5 kg of propellant charge. In the case of 155 mm artillery ammunition, where the powder is loaded separately, its mass can range from several to several kilograms.

🔹 300 tons of gunpowder per day

In practice, each day of war means the consumption of hundreds of tons of gunpowder alone. Pro-Kremlin publicist Roman Skomorokhov estimated the demand for Russian troops at approximately 300 tons daily and 10,000 Tons per month.

Even if we assume that Ukraine is a bit more careful in getting rid of its ammunition stocks, the front itself consumes from a dozen to 20,000 Tons of gunpowder a month. Although the war in the East towers over other conflicts in its scale, it is not the only one—it overlaps with, among others, Israel’s fight against Hamas and the geographically nearby conflict of the international coalition with the Houthis.

An ad hoc solution is to create – as in the case of supplies to Ukraine – an ammunition coalition looking for supplies available worldwide. Both sides of the conflict import cartridges from the most distant corners of the world, which is the basis for even such pariahs of the international community as North Korea, which is becoming a valuable ally of Russia.

🔹 Rebuilding potential

The current demand is compounded by the global arms race and the West’s attempts to rebuild ammunition reserves, which were significantly depleted after the end of the Cold War. Whoever can declare the development of the ammunition industry. The European Union is allocating half a billion euros for a support program for manufacturers.

It all comes down to expanding the necessary infrastructure. Yes, ammunition will not be created without it. However, it would not be possible without nitrocellulose from a raw material whose production is mainly controlled by countries outside the broadly understood West.

🔹 Linen and wood instead of cotton?

This is recalled by a recent interview given to the Financial Times by Armin Papperger, the president of the German arms company Rheinmetall. He noted that China meets 70 percent of the European demand for cotton to produce gunpowder.

Theoretically, this problem can be circumvented by the development of new technologies—the production of nitrocellulose is possible, among others. Russians have recently been boasting about using wood or flax. They are also dependent on imports—cotton plantations, for which the Aral Sea was dried up during the USSR, are now located outside Russia.

The need to move away from cotton is signaled by, among others, Sweden, where the Saab concern is considering a long-term change in technology that will reduce the dependence of arms production on the availability of this material. However, this requires time, and the industry needs to switch to new sources. Meanwhile, ammunition is required immediately.

🔹 China controls the West’s arms.

This leads to a situation in which the lack of money or even production capacity (although their scarcity also matters) is not the cause of the possibility of waging war but the prosaic shortage of cotton.

Cotton is thus becoming a strategic raw material, just like rare earth metals, which are critical to the development of electromobility and whose mining is dominated by China, or tungsten, which is essential for the arms industry and whose production is also controlled by Beijing.

Meanwhile, ammunition manufacturers like Vista Outdoor have already noticed the coming problem. They no longer warn about cartridge shortages but fear that the world market may soon run out of gunpowder.