Federal Losing Lake City Contract

[JohnS624]

Federal will not be operating LC after the middle of this year. The new contract was awarded to Winchester. This may be a bad thing as Winchester ammo is normally priced higher than Federal. The issue is the softness of the civilian market. The operator has to buy all excess capacity beyond military needs. Under the current contract, Federal had to get Hornady and Winchester to take some of the production since they couldn't sell it all themselves. That's why you see the Hornady Frontier brand loaded in LC case and more Winchester 5.56 ammo. It should prove interesting.

[balrog006]

Federal will not be operating LC after the middle of this year. The new contract was awarded to Winchester. This may be a bad thing as Winchester ammo is normally priced higher than Federal. The issue is the softness of the civilian market. The operator has to buy all excess capacity beyond military needs. Under the current contract, Federal had to get Hornady and Winchester to take some of the production since they couldn't sell it all themselves. That's why you see the Hornady Frontier brand loaded in LC case and more Winchester 5.56 ammo. It should prove interesting.

Based on your last it sounds like whoever makes it, we will see it for sale by multiple Names. I agree on your price point observation though, I’ve never seen Winchester ammo as inexpensive as Federal equivalents.

[buckey]

So who will be loading Frontier 5.56? I've heard in the past they had some problems.

[Roundballer]

It very well might get interesting.

There will be a major shift in who has the largest production capacity, which should drive the market price (for them) down. The total market will then have to adjust for the shifts.

It was not that long ago that the "cheap stuff" on the market was the Winchester White box.

[JohnS624]

So who will be loading Frontier 5.56? I've heard in the past they had some problems.

I've never heard of any problems. LC is an expert at producing 5.56. If Hornady doesn't get a piece of the pie, we may see Frontier disappear from the catalog.

[JohnS624]

It very well might get interesting.

There will be a major shift in who has the largest production capacity, which should drive the market price (for them) down. The total market will then have to adjust for the shifts.

It was not that long ago that the "cheap stuff" on the market was the Winchester White box.

That was probably when Olin ran Lake City. I believe the rep said that Federal has had the contract for the last 19 years and Winchester-Olin had it for 13 years prior to that.

[VIGILANT]

That's too bad. I really like Lake City and the price as well. If Winchester is too costly (or too dirty), I'll just go back to using S&B or PMC.