Land Force: NZ's ammunition specialists | ADM Feb 2010
Nick Lee-Frampton | Wellington
When ammunition manufacturers Ordnance Developments Ltd (ODL) decided to expand their export activities recently, the Wanganui based company targeted defence forces that, like the ADF and the NZ Defence Force (NZDF), that use the Steyr 5.56 rifle - which led them to the Irish Army.
The only practical difference is that the Irish Steyrs are made in Austria, the company's marketing director Tony Dobbs told the NZ Defence Industry Association's forum.
"The Irish did their homework very well and they wanted to know all about the NZ Army's experience of using our blank rounds, particularly about gun wear when using steel cartridges," Dobbs explained.
"They wanted to be sure that what they were buying was fit for purpose, so they sent two people to New Zealand who used their own Steyr weapons, including rifles and a machine gun, for test firing our ammunition."
ODL has an instrumented firing range that provides detailed data on every round fired, including pressure and muzzle velocity.
"Ammunition people get very twitchy about steel versus brass and the Irish were anxious about [the possibility of] soft steel causing excessive wear to their guns.
"However, the NZ Army reassured the Irish that you do not get excessive wear from using steel cartridge cases."
Dobbs said the Irish Defence Force order was shipped to Dublin, via Felixstowe, in five 40ft containers, each holding 30 tonnes of ammunition, raising their European profile considerably.
Established over 30 years ago, ODL is a family owned and ISO 9001:2008 qualified business, predominately manufacturing small arms training ammunition, including 5.56, 7.62 and 9mm and .50 calibre, both blanks and ball, as well as the accompanying linking machines.
"We have exported 7.62mm linkers to the US and the UAE," Dobbs said.
"We make our own machinery to military-specifications and we have sold in excess of 100 million rounds of 5.56 blank ammunition to the NZDF, including 45 million in steel cartridge cases.
"We are able to produce 40 million rounds of 5.56 blank ammunition a year, without too much pain we can probably double that," Dobbs said.
"The recoil of blanks is similar to that of live ammunition.
"You need to fit a BFA (blank-firing adaptor) to provide sufficient gas pressure to cycle the weapon.
"We use an American-made powder specifically designed for blank firing, the deposit left in the weapon is a minimum.
"Every protection possible is necessary to avoid contaminating blanks with live ammunition.
"Our blanks are a different colour from live rounds and the NZDF [uses transparent] ammunition boxes so they can easily tell if any contamination has occurred."
ODL also supplies blank ammunition for use in air shows such as Warbirds over Wanaka and the company provided filmmaker Peter Jackson with the ammunition used in the film King Kong.
Appropriately, each cartridge bore the marks ‘KK.'