Wah Industries Limited Contracts Turkish Company Repkon for Artillery Shell Factory QUWA
On 21 November, Pakistan’s Wah Industries Limited (WIL) signed an agreement with the Turkish defence contractor Repkon to set up an ammunition body production and filling line at WIL’s facilities for 155 mm artillery shells. This new facility will be able to manufacture 120,000 artillery shells per year.
View attachment 94697
-------------------------------
Repkon’s US subsidiary,
Repkon USA, is establishing
155 mm artillery shell production lines in Texas. A contract for the project was
signed in October 2024, with production expected to account for 30 percent of all US-manufactured 155 mm shells by 2025. Located in Mesquite, Texas, the facility aims to produce 30,000 shells monthly as part of broader efforts by the US Department of Defense to address a heightened munitions demand, particularly due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Repkon, founded in 1978 and based in Istanbul, Türkiye, designs and manufactures metal forming machines and provides turnkey production plants. Its technologies include flow forming, shear forming, and hot spinning, enabling the production of components for defense, aerospace, automotive, oil and gas, and mining sectors. Repkon's products include artillery shell production lines, turbine and motor parts, vehicle wheels, and precision tubes.
View attachment 94698
---------------------------------
Repkon is an industrial systems company that supplies machinery for aerospace, oil and gas, automotive, and petrochemical industries. The company also carries out its own original R&D to “develop strategically important technologies” for Turkiye across both defence and civilian sectors.
View attachment 94699
WIL was established in 1958 as a commercial subsidiary of Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF), which is the country’s primary manufacturer of small arms, small arms ammunition, and artillery shells.
While WIL markets and sells some POF goods to the domestic civilian market, its work has expanded into numerous products for industrial uses, such as steel, gases, and explosives, among others.
View attachment 94700
This new agreement with Repkon suggests that WIL is directly entering the defence industry as a vendor of artillery shells. Granted, WIL does manufacture small arms ammunition, but those can be marketed to civilian and defence buyers alike. Artillery shells, on the other hand, are purely defence applications.
Traditionally, POF had managed Pakistan’s defence ammunition needs, especially artillery shells as well as artillery rockets. This shift towards WIL adding capacity may suggest that POF could be reorganizing by potentially offloading more defence-oriented work to WIL.
A Sign of Contract Manufacturing for Other Companies?
Several factors could be driving POF to offload artillery shell production work to WIL.
View attachment 94702
First, the global demand for artillery shells, especially in the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine War, has significantly gone up. Ukraine
reportedly fires 5,000 to 6,700 shells per day, which automatically makes Kyiv the foremost potential buyer of any net-new shell production. Moreover, Ukraine’s ongoing need for artillery shells likely depleted existing Western European stocks, prompting those countries to also look across both domestic and foreign sources for products.
In this context, the new WIL facility will add to the global supply chain of artillery shells, thereby sharing the burden for Ukrainian and Western ammunition needs alike.
View attachment 94696
Second, Pakistan is one of Ukraine’s ammunition contractors. In 2022, Pakistan signed 364MUSD deal with Global Military and Northrop Grumman to supply artillery shells, some of which were sent to the frontlines in Ukraine. However, the Ukrainians had Complained about the quality of Pakistani ammunition (unclear if they were referring to shells or rockets)…"
------------------------------
Turkish firm Repkon USA secures a $435 million contract to build a TNT plant in Kentucky, marking a significant step in reducing U.S. reliance on overseas suppliers for defense materials
www.turkiyetoday.com
A plant for the production of 155-mm shells is being prepared for launch in the state of Texas in the United States
mil.in.ua
