It would be my guess that when one of their biggest customer was down they scaled powder production way back.
Powder has been off the shelves for almost a year now. Only reason not to sell it on the reload market is if you can't get enough small containers. Of if your powder packaging is no where near big enough to handle the volume. Adding powder packaging lines seems easy compared to a lot of other stuff.
Shoot man, Saw Vihtavuori powder on the shelves the other day, At least 55 bucks a jug, I left it all for the rich guys.
Have to sell X amount to cover overhead and operating cost and then X amount above that to meet minimum profit expectations. Not know what % Remington made up of the powder sales. It very well may have made more sense to shut some or a lot of the production down if it equated to operating at a loss or even break even. My guess would be that all of the reloader powder sales combined are a fraction of what a manufacture like Remington purchased. Just my guess as to why.
All of the ones in striking distance for me have Stihl barns similar to the Gun barns. 4-5 aisles wide with two rows of shelving removed to make a central wide aisle with Stihl displays and on one side a 60-70 foot wall of stihl saws and on the opposite side a same length wall of trimmers, leaf blowers, concrete saws etc. Centered at the end of the aisle is the stihl sales and service counter with 2-3 dedicated sales people and the stihl mechanic area. Regular aisle to right facing the back of the stores are Poulan, Ryobi, off brand junk and single little husq of a 14" nature. A lot of Husq fans here that were real disappointed when all the Husq saws disappeared from our Rural Kings.
Maybe they just haven't gotten to us yet! Now the sales associates are going to have to start bad mouthing Husq and learn to sing the praises of Stihl. Both are good from what I hear.
Today I learned that 3 years ago, went this Rural King opened, we carried Stihl chainsaws and equipment. However, we are in the territory of a Stihl distributor and that is when we had to switch to Husq chainsaws and equipment. That's what most likely happened up there in Yankee land.
