Warsaw: Swedish company Swebal is building the first trinitrotoluene (TNT) factory to be opened in Sweden since the end of the Cold War, aiming to expand the European-made supply of a key explosive input used to make ammunition.
Meanwhile, the continent’s only major TNT plant in Poland is investing to boost its production capacity.
With Russia’s manufacturing capabilities dwarfing Europe’s output and the Iran war creating new supply chain bottlenecks, European players should invest in expanding their explosive manufacturing capabilities, Joakim Sjöblom, the co-founder and chief executive of Swebal, said.
“As the Cold War was ending, we had seven major TNT plants in Europe. Today, there is only one such factory, operated by Nitro-Chem in Poland. This is far below European needs, and it makes the investment that Swebal is advancing in Sweden an element of a much-needed surge in Europe’s production capacities,” Sjöblom said.
Under the European Union’s Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP), the bloc’s member states were to reach a production capacity of 2 million artillery shells annually by the end of 2025. However, in the CEO’s view, while NATO and EU calculations of European production capacities focus on how many rounds the continent’s producers can assemble, looking at this figure alone does not give a full picture.
“We need to look at the available supply of rare earth metals which is dominated by Chinese suppliers,
semiconductors from Taiwanese companies, and also Asian energetic materials on which European companies depend so much,” according to Sjöblom.
The ongoing tensions around the Strait of Hormuz that have been triggered by the Iran war are a reminder that Europe’s long-distance dependency on imports is a serious vulnerability for its defence industries, he said.
“The existing raw material supply chains are not sufficient for Europe to build up its ammunition stockpiles, and this creates a need to develop new TNT factories. The entire supply chain must be scaled up, not only the supply of final products,” Sjöblom said. “Currently, there are advanced projects to produce TNT in Sweden, Finland and Greece.”
Under the plan, Swebal’s new factory is to have the capacity to produce more than 4,000 metric tons of TNT annually, and production is to be launched in 2028. In comparison, Russia is estimated to make more than 50,000 tons of TNT per year, according to data from Swebal.
“The Russian industry produces large quantities of TNT and uses them to arm Shahed-type drones that it attacks targets in Ukraine with. In Europe, we have spent many years depending on imports from Asia, but this generates risks that undermine European security,” the CEO said. “The trend now is to buy as much as possible from European sources, and we are seeing a very high interest in our factory under construction from Europe’s defence companies.”
Swebal estimates the majority of its plant’s future TNT output, at around 70 percent, will be sold to producers of missiles and artillery ammunition including 155mm shells. A number of European countries are in the process of accommodating new factories that will produce this caliber. The remainder of the Swedish factory’s TNT production will be delivered to producers of drones and mines, according to Sjöblom.
Nitro-Chem is a subsidiary of Polish state-run defence giant PGZ. Amid a growing European demand for explosives, in March 2026, Nitro-Chem signed a deal to open a second TNT production unit at its plant in Bydgoszcz, in Poland’s west.
“We are observing a clear increase in other countries’ interest in TNT, and the efforts to build a second production unit will allow us to efficiently respond to these needs while strengthening Poland’s security and industrial independence,” Arkadiusz Miszuk, the chief executive of Nitro-Chem, was quoted in a March 18 statement.
In addition to supplying explosives to the Polish defence industry, Nitro-Chem says it exports its wares to countries such as the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Ukraine, among others.
