Dear Reloader,

Those of you who use our AP and AS series powders will be acutely aware that availability of these powders has been sporadic over the past couple of years. There are a number of factors that have contributed to this situation, and if you are already aware of these, please skip over the next section to see the current status and planned availability of the specific type of powder you are interested in.

Background

As we reported before, a production issue in 2013 rendered us temporarily unable to produce AP70N. After this was resolved, a propellant burn event at our flake (shotgun and pistol) powder drying building temporarily halted our production of these powders. Fortunately the building is operated by remote control, so none of our production personnel were injured. The clean-up of the old site, and construction and commissioning of the new facility, took more than a year to complete.

Subsequent to a review of this event, we needed to introduce process changes and controls that affected our ability to produce pistol and shotgun powders throughout the remainder of 2014 and into 2015. We are now also commissioning an entire new powder plant, and as part of this process we are making changes to our powder range to ensure that it can be made safely and sustainably on the new equipment. We are planning to manufacture a significant amount of buffer stock to ensure that powder supply continues uninterrupted during the phased switchover to the new plant, currently planned to occur during the second half of 2016. The new pistol and shotgun powders will be known as the APS (Australian Pistol and Shotgun) series of propellants, and will start becoming available from mid-2016. AS and AP series propellants will remain available at least until the middle of 2017.

The following paragraphs explain the current status and availability in our storage magazines of each type of AS or AP powder. Please allow some time for any product to be available at the retail level, as the storage, transport and distribution of smokeless propellant powders are quite heavily regulated and delays in the supply chain that are outside of our control can occur.

AS30N

500g jars are in stock and we do not foresee any issues affecting availability.

2 kilogram jars are limited at the moment, but will be fully available again in December 2015. Please allow some time for these to reach retailers.

AS50N

We are now finalising a batch of this powder. Provided that it passes all tests, both 500g and 2kg jars should become freely available from December 2015 onwards.

AP50N

We do not have any AP50N in stock at the moment, and due to some issues we experienced with production of AP50N we do not expect to have any available for distribution until March 2016. Limited supply will be resumed in March, and AP50N should return to full availability in April 2016. Please allow some time for full supply to reach retailers.

Manufacturing a batch of powder is extremely complex and time consuming, and takes at least 6 months from start to finish. Our buffer stock of AP50N was depleted after the unusual production issues described in the background section of this notice. Please be assured that we are doing our utmost to reliably restore the supply of AP50N as quickly as possible.

AP70N

Both 500g and 2kg jars will be in limited supply for the remainder of 2015, but full supply will be resumed in January 2016. Please allow some time for full supply of AP70N to reach retailers.

AP100 and Trail Boss®

No shortages in supply of these powders are currently foreseen.

Please visit our website at adiworldclass.com.au for updates, reloading data and contact details for reloading enquiries. Here are the links to the “where-to-buy” pages of our official distributors:

Finally, we are aware that there are many rumours going around about ADI Powders. We urge you to only take seriously what you read on our website, or hear directly from our appointed spokespeople and official distributors.

Enjoy our sport, and stay safe out there.

Ferdi Kluever
Sales Director, Australian Munitions