According to the director of Ukrainian Armored Vehicles, Vladyslav Belbas, the manufacturer received only one proposal from a Western company in three years, which was to build a €20M plant to process nitrocellulose into gunpowder for. The output would be about 600 tons of gunpowder per year, enough for 160,000 rounds of 122 mm ammunition. He added that only the nitrocellulose processing stage was considered, which is not the most complex in the gunpowder production cycle.
Belbas says that if Ukrainian manufacturers had stable access to gunpowder and appropriate government contracts, the number of projectiles produced yearly would increase by hundreds of thousands. Of course, the gunpowder production enterprise is inherently explosive, which makes it an easy target for Russia and logistically difficult to import raw materials.
Instead, after simplifying the import of cotton varieties into Ukraine, several imported cotton varieties were planted to be used in gunpowder production as part of an experiment and have already been harvested. The Ministry of Defense’s laboratories are working to determine whether the fiber is suitable for gunpowder production.