The Department of Defense's Industrial Base Support (IBS) office, through the Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III authority, is supporting a Louisiana facility that produces black powder, a widely used propellant in artillery, firearms, rocketry, pyrotechnics and numerous weapons systems.
The $3.5 million investment by the Department of Defense (DoD) will allow the facility, owned by Estes Energetics, through its Goex subsidiary, to reopen after an accident shut down production. The total cost of the project is $5.3 million over two years, and it will allow production to resume at the Minden, Louisiana facility in two years or less.
This investment will bring a critical defense industrial base asset back to production status and help Goex modernize the facility with the intent of reducing operational risk and improving safety. Goex is currently the only American source of black powder, which also has commercial applications in model rockets, muzzleloading firearms, fireworks, and other industrial processes.
"The Department of Defense's DPA Title III Program Office continues to deliver on its mission of reshoring and re-establishing domestic production of materials critical to our nation's national security needs and strategic interests," said Halimah Najieb-Locke, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Resilience. "We are pleased to have the opportunity to support this U.S. company as it works to restart the American-based supply chain of this important propellant."
The investment will also allow Goex to hire up to an additional 30 workers in Louisiana.
About the Department of Defense's DPA Title III Program:
The DPA Title III Program for the Department of Defense is dedicated to ensuring the timely availability of essential domestic industrial resources to support national defense and homeland security requirements now and in the future. The program works in partnership with the uniformed services, other government agencies, and industry to identify areas where critical industrial capacity is lagging or non-existent. Once a need is identified, the program engages with U.S. and Canadian companies to mitigate these risks using grants, purchase commitments, loans, or loan guarantees. By executing its mission, the DPA Title III Program reduces the nation's reliance on foreign supply chains, ensures the integrity of materials supplied to the American Warfighter, and helps create a resilient, robust, and
secure defense industrial base.
