Europe’s drive to expand artillery production has exposed a constraint that sits well upstream of the factory floor: access to nitrocellulose, the key chemical used in modern propellants.
Nitrocellulose is produced by nitrating cellulose, and in the defence sector it has traditionally relied on cotton linters and cotton pulp as feedstock. Those materials sit at the intersection of the global textiles trade, chemical regulation, and export controls.
Industry executives have warned that Europe’s supply chain is heavily concentrated. Armin Papperger, the chief executive of Rheinmetall, told the Financial Times in April 2024 that Europe relies on China for “more than 70 per cent” of its cotton linters, a by-product of cotton processing that is used to make nitrocellulose.
The dependence has practical consequences in a wartime market. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European governments have sought to expand output of NATO-standard 155mm shells while also supplying Ukraine and replenishing depleted stockpiles. The European Commission has pointed to a target of ramping ammunition capacity to two million rounds a year by the end of 2025, supported by funding under the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP).
But propellant production is not simply a matter of turning on additional machining capacity. Nitrocellulose manufacturing requires tightly controlled chemical processes, specialist equipment, and stringent safety systems. In Europe, the sector has long operated under strict environmental and industrial controls. Over time, parts of the chemicals value chain were reduced, restructured, or shifted abroad in favour of imported raw materials, particularly from producers able to offer lower-cost inputs.
This matters because cotton-based feedstocks are not interchangeable on short notice. Switching to alternative sources of cellulose, including wood-derived pulp, may be technically feasible, but it can trigger lengthy qualification and recertification work across propellant formulations and ammunition designs. Defence manufacturers and governments tend to treat these processes as safety-critical, requiring stable specifications and repeated testing before materials are used at scale.
China’s wider export control direction has added to the uncertainty. Beijing introduced new implementing regulations for dual-use export controls that took effect on 1 December 2024, strengthening licensing, compliance, and end-use related requirements across controlled items. Even where an input is not explicitly restricted, the broader trend towards tighter scrutiny has encouraged companies to treat supply continuity and documentation of final end users as a growing factor in procurement planning.
Russia’s demand pressures the same market. Western authorities have repeatedly described cotton cellulose, cotton pulp, and nitrocellulose as critical explosives precursors for Russia’s gunpowder and rocket propellants, and have targeted supply networks linked to these materials. In May 2024, the US Treasury said Russia relies on external suppliers for cotton cellulose and nitrocellulose and announced sanctions aimed at importers and suppliers, including entities based in China. Separate reporting and analysis have described a rise in Russian sourcing from China and other intermediaries despite restrictions.
A June 2025 assessment by the Jamestown Foundation argued that Russian gunpowder production nearly doubled from 2022 to 2024, supported by increased imports and domestic manufacturing tied to cotton cellulose nitrate, while noting that Russia still depends on imported raw materials, including cotton pulp and cellulose nitrate. For Europe, this creates a market in which a sanctioned belligerent is competing for the same upstream inputs as European producers who are trying to expand supply for Ukraine and for their own armed forces.
Nitrocellulose: Amid Sanctions, Russia Doubles Imports of Key Explosive Ingredient
The cotton geography further complicates the picture. China is central to the processed cotton linters trade, but cotton cultivation and processing is also significant in parts of Central Asia. In policy debates, countries such as Kazakhstan are often mentioned because they sit within regional cotton ecosystems and trade corridors. The relevance is not that a single country can replace China at scale overnight, but that supply diversification requires mapping the full chain: agriculture, processing, chemical conversion, and the specialist steps that turn industrial nitrocellulose into military-grade propellant components.
European industry has begun responding with acquisitions and capacity moves aimed at securing the bottleneck. In April 2025, Rheinmetall agreed to acquire Hagedorn-NC, a German producer of industrial nitrocellulose, with plans to shift production towards military-grade output as part of its ammunition expansion strategy. The move was framed as an attempt to close a critical constraint in propellant supply at a time when European rearmament plans depend on scaling both explosives and energetics alongside metalwork and assembly.
Policy analysts have increasingly described nitrocellulose as part of a wider “defence chemicals” challenge for Europe: the industrial base for energetics needs investment, permitting pathways, and long-term contracting if production is to be reliable at scale. The underlying issue is structural: Europe can expand final assembly lines for shells, but without secure inputs for propellants and explosives, production plans can be slowed by shortages far from the visible end product.
In practice, the debate now sits at the intersection of industrial policy, environmental regulation, and strategic procurement. Europe’s ammunition goals rest not only on defence budgets and factory expansion, but on whether the upstream chemicals chain can be rebuilt or diversified quickly enough to meet military demand under conditions of geopolitical competition.
