Steve Hornady Explains Increased Production Plans

For over half a year, Hornady Manufacturing, along with the rest of the shooting sports industry, has experienced an unbelievable spike in demand. This dramatic increase in demand is unprecedented. As stated earlier this year in our “Word on Availability” (www.hornady.com/support/faqs/product-av­ailability) we have been continuously growing for a number of years; adding people, equipment and manufacturing space as rapidly as we can. We are producing and shipping product at record levels and are continually looking to grow and improve our ability to fulfill orders. But the current state of the industry is such that our increase in shipments this year is overshadowed by a 200% increase in demand.

One area that we have identified that will enable us to increase production, is the minimization of machinery downtime. The largest period of downtime our machines experience is during change over and retooling to convert a machine from manufacturing one bullet or cartridge to another. Under normal market conditions, we can keep the supply chain full by making popular items on a regular basis and keeping specialty or less-used products on a seasonal basis. However, with demand at record levels, it has become difficult to justify shutting down a machine to change it over to produce a product of less demand. Therefore, we are temporarily suspending some items in order to focus our efforts on the most popular and highest demand products and ship more total product.

We realize that many of the suspended items are going to disappoint some of our customers. We have painstakingly reviewed our order status and order history and unfortunately had to make some tough decisions. It wasn’t easy, but we know that we will do a better job of servicing the industry as a whole by focusing on the items of highest demand.

We are not alone; this is effectively already happening throughout our industry, but is accomplished through selective manufacture with no notification to the industry. We are simply making every effort to be up-front about our plans to maximize production.

Again, this is only temporary. This is not a permanent suspension. We will continue to push as hard as we can to meet the demand of our industry and will produce our full catalog of items as soon as we can. Please know that nobody wants to produce more and get our product to into your hands more than we do.

And lastly, we feel compelled to address some of the conspiracy theories that we have seen posted. NO, this is not a conspiracy effort to shape the industry, nor is it controlled by the government. We are simply being forthright about our manufacturing plans and our efforts to supply MORE product to the very hungry shooting sports industry.

We truly appreciate your patience during this period of time. Thank you for your understanding.

The Team at Hornady