Flat Prices, Missing Brands

Bottom line

September was a quiet month for price and a loud one for availability. Across 356 canister SKUs we have tracked at Graf & Sons since August, five changed price, all downward, all of them Shooters World 8 lb jugs. Our index reads 99.5 against August's 100. The median canister powder still costs about $49 a pound on the shelf, and the bulk discount is still a thin 11%.

Availability split cleanly by manufacturer rather than by powder type. Vihtavuori (81% of listings in stock), Winchester (67%), Hodgdon (61%) and Accurate (60%) are functionally available. Alliant (7%), IMR (12%), Ramshot (28%) and Norma (0%) are not. At the three retailers whose stock feeds we use, every classic IMR rifle powder from 4064 to 7828 was out of stock on all fourteen days we sampled (14–27 September), and so was every Alliant Reloder from 15 up except RL-26.

Two powders came back into stock during the sample window — Accurate High Country, which is new, and Power Pro 300-MP. Nothing went out. Stock is not draining; it is simply not arriving for three of the ten brands.

The four editions that follow cut the same month by what you load: Handgun, Large Handgun, Small Rifle and Large Rifle — each with its own cheapest-in-stock table, its own missing list, and the late-September retailer sale that only shows up when you look band by band.

1. The index

The index is the median shelf price per pound across every canister listing at Graf & Sons — in and out of stock — with August 2026 set to 100. Graf's is the base because it was the only retailer whose full catalog we were reading when the series began; the other retailers are tracked alongside but do not move the index until they have a full base month of their own.

Across the four retailers we now read in full — Hodgdon direct, Graf & Sons, Lohman Arms and Bruno Shooters Supply — the picture on 27 September was 1,006 canister listings, 37% in stock, median $46.95 per pound. That lower blended median is a mix effect, not a price move: Lohman lists most powders around $40 a pound but has only one listing in five in stock.

Cut by edition, the market has a price ladder of its own: fast pistol powder is the cheapest shelf at $46.75 a pound, slow rifle the dearest at $54.99, and none of the four moved between August and September.

2. Prices: seven moves, all down

Between 14 and 27 September, seven listings changed price across all retailers. None went up. (Bruno also ran “Labor Day blowout” pricing on IMR 4227, Reloder 7 and Reloder 10X in the first days of the window, and on 26 September re-tagged about a hundred listings “SALE!” — the editions have the band-by-band detail; it is the cheapest powder in our data, and it is one retailer's clearance, not a market price.)

The Shooters World cuts are worth a second look. Shooters World is the one brand at 100% availability — all 30 listings in stock, every day we sampled — and Graf's is now trimming its bulk prices. Whether that is the maker's pricing or the retailer's, it is what happens when there is product to move rather than product to allocate, and it is the first downward pressure in our series. The powders behind those labels come from Explosia in the Czech Republic (see who makes your powder), outside the North American feedstock squeeze.

Everything else held. Hodgdon direct did not touch a price. The Vihtavuori 8 lb jugs that undercut domestic extruded powders in August — N140, N150, N160 at $44.62 a pound — are still at that price and, unlike August, all three were in stock on every day we sampled.

3. Availability: the missing brands

Share of each maker's listings in stock on 27 September, across Hodgdon direct, Graf & Sons and Lohman Arms — the three retailers whose stock flags we use for availability (Bruno's are not; see the data notes).

Alliant. Eleven of 164 listings in stock, all of them at Graf's: three sizes of Sport Pistol, one-pound cans of Reloder 26 ($65.99), Reloder 7 ($79.99), Reloder 10X, BE-86 and Power Pro 2000-MR, one lonely jug of Unique at $55.37, a jug of Hi-Energy, and the returning Power Pro 300-MP. Reloder 15, 16, 17, 19, 22, 23, 25, 33 and 50; Bullseye, Power Pistol, Red Dot, Green Dot, Blue Dot, Herco, 2400, AR-Comp, e3, 20/28 — none were in stock at those three retailers on any of the fourteen days we sampled. This is the canister suspension Vista announced in May 2024, now in its third year; the forum reports of a jug of Reloder turning up at $90 a pound are what a market with no supply looks like.

IMR. Eleven of 93: 8208 XBR, 3031 and 4227 at Hodgdon direct and Graf's, and a single one-pound can of Enduron 4955 at Lohman. The whole classic extruded line — 4064, 4350, 4895, 4198, 4320, 4831, 7828 — and the rest of the Enduron family (4166, 4451, 7977, 8133) were absent every day we sampled. Most of the IMR line is extruded at General Dynamics' Valleyfield plant in Quebec — the same company whose St. Marks plant makes the ball powders that are on the shelf. The one IMR powder reliably available is 8208 XBR, which is not a Valleyfield product at all: it is made in Australia alongside Hodgdon's Extreme line (see who makes your powder). The IMR shortage is a Valleyfield shortage. Whatever the forums say about Enduron being discontinued, Hodgdon has not said it; what we can say is that the retailers we track have had none to sell.

Hodgdon's own gaps. Hodgdon at 61% hides a pattern. The ADI-made Extreme rifle powders are present — Varget, H4350, H1000, H4831SC, H4895, Retumbo each at four to six listings in stock. The ADI-made shotshell and pistol line is not: Clays, International and Universal were out every day we sampled, as were H4198, H414 and plain H4831. If you shoot clays, the Australian pipeline is prioritising rifle.

What is in stock is, to a first approximation, ball powder from St. Marks (Winchester's whole line, H110, H335, CFE 223, BL-C(2), the Accurate ball grades), Belgian ball powder (Ramshot, from PB Clermont), Finnish extruded (Vihtavuori), Czech (Shooters World), and the Australian extruded line sold as Hodgdon Extreme and IMR 8208 XBR. What is missing is Valleyfield extruded (IMR) and Radford (Alliant). That is the map of who has feedstock, plant by plant.

The same picture, maker by maker and edition by edition. Read across a row to see where a brand is thin; read down a column to see which shelf is fullest.

4. The bulk discount: still thin, and sometimes negative

Across 347 powders where the same retailer lists both a 1 lb can and an 8 lb jug, the median saving for buying the jug is 10.8% — the same 11% we flagged in August as unusually thin. Two things sit under that median.

Lohman Arms discounts bulk hard — 30–50% on some jugs (IMR 4955, Winchester 748, Universal Clays, Ramshot Hunter, Alliant 2400) — and has almost none of them in stock. A price on an empty shelf is a promise, not a price.

Graf's has four inverted pairs, where the 8 lb jug costs more per pound than the 1 lb can: Reloder 50 (−17%), Power Pro 300-MP (−12%), Vihtavuori 20N29 (−12%) and Norma Hi-Energy (−11%). Every one is a slow magnum or specialty powder with thin demand. The one-pound can is priced to move; the jug is priced for whoever must have it. Check the per-pound figure on the price desk before assuming the jug is the deal.

5. Industry

Little that was new in September; much that continued. General Dynamics' 20% expansion of ball-powder capacity at St. Marks, announced in January, is the single development that maps onto what we see on the shelf — ball powders are the available powders. Hodgdon's August 2026 burn-rate chart revision added Accurate High Country, and the first retail listings of it appeared in our data this month. CSG, which now owns the Kinetic Group (Federal, CCI, Speer, Remington) and reports the U.S. commercial channel as firming, has said nothing about lifting the Alliant canister suspension. Primers are the loose component. Our component search on 27 September had imported standard primers — Ginex, MEDEF, Magtech — in stock at $31–44 per thousand in 5,000-count cases, with the median standard-primer listing across all brands and sizes near $60. Forum reports of $45–50 per thousand are consistent with that; a year ago the same cases were hard to find at any price.

The structural picture from the August report — nitrocellulose feedstock as the binding constraint, military allocation first, Western capacity arriving 2027–2029 — is unchanged, and this month's numbers are what that picture looks like at retail: no price relief, no price shock, and a supply that depends entirely on which plant your powder comes from.

6. The owners: what the parent companies said this month

Every label on the shelf answers to a larger company, and what those companies announce — or pointedly do not — tells you more about next quarter's supply than any retailer listing. Each month we sweep their newsrooms, filings and the trade press. Here is September.

Read together: the two owners with something to say this month — Olin and Nammo — are the two whose powders are on the shelf. Winchester's Army contract, announced by the Pentagon on 11 September, locks Lake City demand in through 2031, which is a reason to expect St. Marks ball powder to stay prioritised for military lines even as the plant expands; that it was the only bidder says how few plants can do this work. Nammo's steady drumbeat of consumer load data is the behaviour of a maker with capacity for the civilian channel, and the 81% availability figure in section 3 is that behaviour showing up at retail.

The silence is as informative. CSG put out four releases in September and an energetics acquisition in August, all pointed at European military demand; it has reported improving U.S. commercial conditions for two quarters and still has not said a word about restoring Alliant canister supply. Olin's news cuts both ways: Winchester is growing on commercial pricing and volume, and its parent is about to merge into a chemicals company that has never owned an ammunition business. General Dynamics' investment announcements are all ball powder and artillery; nothing about Valleyfield's extruded lines, which is where the IMR gap lives. Until one of those two companies speaks, the missing-brands pattern in section 3 is the forecast.

What to do with this

• If you load rifle with Hodgdon Extreme or Vihtavuori: buy on your normal schedule. Supply was steady all month and prices did not move.
• If you load with Alliant or classic IMR: stop waiting on the big retailers; the odd jug that surfaces is being sold at clearance prices at smaller shops, and it will not surface twice. Use the cross-reference to find the neighbours, pick one with published data for your cartridge, and work up from the maker's starting load. A second qualified powder is worth more than a jug found at $90.
• If you shoot clays on Hodgdon Clays / International / Universal: the Australian line is prioritising rifle. Titegroup, Titewad and the Winchester shotshell powders were in stock all month.
• If you are buying bulk: compare the 8 lb per-pound figure against the 1 lb before you order, especially on slow magnum powders. Thin discounts and four inversions this month.
• Set a watch. Name the powder once and we email you the morning it comes back in stock, with a price ceiling if you want one.

Data notes

• Fourteen daily samples, 14–27 September 2026, plus the August base sample of 27 August. Statements about “every day we sampled” mean those fourteen days, not the calendar month; the first half of September is not in the data. Retailers read in full: Hodgdon direct, Graf & Sons, Lohman Arms, Bruno Shooters Supply. American Reloading is sampled but carries no branded canister powder, so it does not appear in canister statistics.
• Availability figures use the stock flags of Hodgdon direct, Graf & Sons and Lohman Arms only. Bruno's prices are used throughout; its stock flags were set aside in this issue while we verify its feed, which changed format mid-month. Bruno itself reported roughly 90–105 canister listings in stock on each day of the window, including Reloder 7, Reloder 10X, IMR 3031, IMR 4227 and 8208 XBR early in the window and, from 26 September, about a hundred listings re-tagged as sale items. Where an edition quotes a Bruno sale price it says so.
• "Canister" means a branded powder with published load data. Surplus and pull-down lots are tracked separately and never compared against canister prices.
• The index is a median of shelf prices, in and out of stock, one retailer, base = 100. It is deliberately simple and will not be back-filled or re-based. A fabricated series would be worth less than none.
• The four editions cut the market by position on the merged burn-rate chart, gated by class: Handgun (pistol, N310 → Major Pistol), Large Handgun (pistol, Blue Dot → Power Pro 300-MP), Small Rifle (rifle, 5744 → H380/Big Game), Large Rifle (rifle, N150 and slower). Shotshell-only powders are counted in the whole-market figures but have no edition of their own yet.

Sources

• RCM price desk — the live version of every table above
• RCM powder cross-reference
• GD-OTS ball powder capacity expansion, St. Marks (Jan 2026)
• Alliant canister shipments suspended (May 2024)
• AccurateShooter forum — "Where is all the Alliant powder?" (2026)
• Rokslide — 2026 powder availability and pricing
• CSG H1 2026 results
• Hodgdon burn-rate chart, Aug 2026 revision
• Department of Defense contracts announcement, Sept. 11, 2026 — Olin Winchester IDIQ
• Defence Blog on the Olin Winchester award (Sep 12, 2026)
• Olin press releases — Huntsman merger HSR expiration (Sep 11, 2026) and Q2 2026 results (Jul 30)
• CSG newsroom — September releases; Gnaschwitz acquisition (Aug 4, 2026)
• Vihtavuori news — .277 SIG Fury data (Sep 14, 2026)
• CSG Ammo+ H1 2026 (SGB, Aug 10, 2026)
• GD-OTS press releases
• Hodgdon news
• Czech government weighs Explosia sale (Reuters)
• The Propellant Squeeze — August 2026 report