Why Europe needs this 24-hour TNT factory deep inside a forest

Times

13 hours ago

Deep in a Swedish forest, a project that holds vital implications for Europe's future security is ready to begin. Work is expected to start this year on a factory to produce the chemical compound trinitrotoluene, better known as TNT.
The site, concealed from view by several hundred metres of densely packed pine trees, would be the continent's first new TNT factory in 30 years. It is due to open in 2027 and will operate 24 hours a day, using 'continuous nitration' to produce 4,500 tonnes of Nato's high explosive — MIL-DTL-248D standard TNT — each year.
At the moment Europe produces only 12,000 tonnes a year, all of which comes from one factory in Poland, and half of which is already pledged to the United States. Russia, by contrast, can produce 50,000 tonnes of TNT annually.
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The rest of Europe's explosives needs — for defence, demolition or construction — have to be shipped from Asia. These supply lines are subject to delays and would be highly vulnerable to interception in the event of war. For that reason all material and machinery for the new Swedish facility will come from within 600km of the site.
This imbalance has a direct battlefield impact.
Partly because of its much greater TNT production capacity, and partly because Moscow has access to six explosives factories in North Korea, Russia generates about five million artillery shells a year. The rest of Europe combined is unable to produce even one million shells.
On the front line, this means Russia can fire 12,000 rounds a day, versus only 7,000 fired by the Ukrainians, according to Ukrainian data.
The missing ingredient isn't necessarily new technology, it's old-fashioned bang. In artillery shells, TNT is the explosive material that generates the destructive force, but only on detonation. TNT is the main compound in the shell, but in the tip is a detonator — such as lead azide — which breaks on impact, triggering a rapid chemical reaction with the TNT, creating the explosive blast.
Added to the Polish output, this new Swedish stream of explosives will bring Europe's TNT capacity up to one fifth of the material at Moscow's disposal.
More production is expected to follow. Sir Keir Starmer announced plans earlier this year for a £1.5 billion investment in six British munitions factories, creating more than 1,000 jobs.
As part of this, BAE Systems said in May that the UK would begin its own mobile explosives department, with six ad hoc shipping containers at various secret sites in the UK. Each container will produce only 100 tonnes of RDX explosives per year — a tiny fraction of the capacity of the proposed Swedish plant.
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RDX is roughly 1.5 times more powerful than TNT in weight and twice as powerful in volume, but more sensitive to shock.
This UK amount is useful but small, says Joakim Sjoblom, co-founder and chief executive of Sweden Ballistics (SWEBAL), the company behind the proposed Swedish facility.
'When you consider every 155mm artillery shell requires 11.3kg of explosive — that's only 9,000 shells worth produced from each shipping container — not enough to match one day in Russia. But there are big advantages to having your explosives made in mobile shipping containers. In Ukraine they use them to make explosives on the move near the front line and the factories are small and agile enough to move away from enemy fire.'
RDX and TNT are chemically similar and work often in tandem — both were blended together during the Second World War to form Composition B, an explosive that is almost equal parts RDX and TNT mixed with wax. One of the main considerations for potential producers though is forestry, says Nick Reynolds, research fellow for land warfare at Royal United Services Institute. He said: 'The base element for TNT is cellulose. Countries like Sweden and places like Canada have a huge source of pine, which is a big factor, something that UK and other countries are lacking.'
A second European TNT factory is planned for Finland, says Sjoblom. 'We need to increase our production rate. Even if you just put the Finnish, Swedish, Polish and the new British initiatives together we are still a long way from matching Russian capacity.'
His factory will be built just outside the Swedish town of Nora — about 140 miles west of Stockholm.
Residents will be only dimly aware of it, he says. As a potential target for enemy states, the factory needs to have as limited a footprint as possible. Local people may notice, snaking out of the forest, a small increase in heavy goods lorries.Nora happens to be one of Europe's best preserved wooden towns — described by its visitors' site as 'Bergslagen's little fairytale town'.
A TNT production site near a town made out of wood sounds like a recipe for catastrophe — but Sjoblom, who consulted the authorities in 38 towns before choosing this one, says TNT is described as the 'mother of all explosives' because it is so stable you can bash it with a hammer and it won't ignite. That's why it needs a detonator in a shell.
'Underwater mining teams take it to the bottom of the sea via days on stormy waves. In Ukraine they're taking it on bumpy roads; qualified and unqualified people might handle it.'Many European countries have found it hard to find locations to build munitions factories. Potential sites are either too close to densely populated areas or are subject to restrictions on environmental impact. 'I know that the Baltic states were also considering building a plan for explosives, but they found it really hard to find a suitable area because you need space,' says Sjoblom.
He said that like the UK, Sweden had a complex web of roads, schools and electrical grids, 'so you cannot just place explosives factories anywhere. Therefore, when you find a suitable location, you'd better produce a lot of volume … because it's not easy.'
Russia is not standing still either. President Putin, less troubled by red tape, has announced an RDX factory capable of producing around 6,000 tonnes of explosives a year in Biysk, Siberia, a city nearly 2,000 miles from Moscow with a history of munitions production.The Swedish site is in a region that has been a defence hub before. In 1915 the company Gyttorp Sprangamnes AB — named after an area of Nora — merged with Nitroglycerin AB, the company of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite.
The new company quickly moved all its production to Gyttorp, and by the 1950s the explosives factory employed more than 800 people. However, the site now almost exclusively makes detonators and shotgun cartridges, rather than explosives.
The new site is less than 30 minutes from Karlskoga and Bjorkborn's industrial area, which hosts the defence companies Saab, Nammo, Eurenco and BAE.
While the project has cross-party support in the Swedish government, there is local opposition. Sjoblom says: 'It doesn't matter if you are building a clothing factory or an explosive plant, there will always be those who don't want it. That's not just safety, many have been raised in the proximity and have many memories there. Opposition also comes from hunters who use the area. It is part of a democratic process to gain the necessary permits, but any concerns about noise, safety, smell or lights, we control that and are equally keen to prevent that for our own privacy interests.'
Sjoblom was previously the chief executive of Minna Technologies, a fintech company that was sold to Mastercard last year, when Sweden joined Nato in response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022.
The confluence of the two events shaped his perception of what to do next. 'Suddenly, I had a two-year-old son and another baby on the way,' he says. 'That is part of the philanthropic reason of why I am spending my time doing this — if I can spend my time helping Europe and stopping a conflict I am very proud to do so.'