The European Commission has allocated €500 million to support ammunition production. According to the European Commission's website, this will allow the European defence industry to increase its ammunition production capacity to 2 million per year by the end of 2025.
The Commission has also launched the Work Programme for the Instrument for Strengthening the European defence industry reinforcement through common procurement act (EDIRPA) and the fourth annual Work Programme of the European Defence Fund (EDF).
The total budget of these programmes is almost €2 billion.
The Commission has completed the ASAP assessment in record time and selected 31 projects to help European industry increase production and readiness of ammunition.
The selected projects cover five areas: explosives, gunpowder, projectiles, missiles, and test and recovery certification. They will be funded with €513 million from the EU and Norwegian budgets. This funding will leverage additional investment from industry through co-financing, bringing the total investment in the supply chain to around €1.4 billion.
ASAP has a special focus on gunpowder and explosives and will allocate around three quarters of the programme to them. The programme will support projects that increase annual production capacity by more than 10,000 tonnes of gunpowder and more than 4,300 tonnes of explosives. To this end, the EU will invest €248 million in gunpowder production capacity and €124 million in explosives production capacity.
Thanks to the measures already taken, the annual capacity of European production of 155 mm shells reached 1 million per year in January this year.
The grant agreements with the selected applicants are expected to be signed in May 2024.