What the Heck Happened to Big Green? Part 2
The Other Remington
In that post, I gave an overview of the death and afterlife of Remington Firearms, formerly the oldest firearm manufacturer in the United States. It has been sad to watch a name of such renown, formerly a major manufacturer of military and sporting arms, finally fade away into total irrelevance after decades of mismanagement. There is, however, a piece of the former Remington still alive under different ownership, and whose recent history is somewhat less sordid but no less complicated.
Formed in 1866 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the Union Metallic Cartridge Company (UMC) is the earliest precursor of today’s Remington Ammunition. It merged with Remington in 1888 when Marcellus Hartley, one of the partners of UMC, bought out the former in collaboration with Winchester. After Winchester sold its equity to Hartley, Remington came under the full ownership of UMC, and the two companies fully combined in 1910.
Vista Outdoor
When Cerberus Capital Management disintegrated Freedom Group in 2020, it split Remington into its constituent parts: the firearm manufacturer, the ammunition manufacturer, and the brand. Last week’s post documented the sorry tale of the former under the Roundhill Group over the past five years. The latter two parts, however, were bought by Vista Outdoor, Inc., another holding company specializing in ammunition and outdoor products.
Unlike many other holding companies, Vista Outdoor did started not as a private venture between wealthy financiers looking to expand their influence, but by being split off from an existing company. In February of 2015, Alliant Techsystems, itself formerly part of Honeywell, spun off its Sporting Group to form Vista; the Aerospace and Defense Groups merged with Orbital Sciences Corporation to become Orbital ATK, now known as Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems.
You may not have heard of Vista Outdoor, but you have certainly bought products from one of the brands they owned. Vista owned 31 companies at the time of its formation, growing to 39 by the end of 2024, including holster makers Blackhawk, GunMate, and Uncle Mike’s. It turns out that Vista also had a stranglehold on the market for crappy scopes, owning Bushnell, Redfield, Tasco, and Weaver. Even Savage Arms was once a part of Vista.
With its winning bid in late 2020, Vista Outdoor added Remington to its existing portfolio of ammunition and ammunition component manufacturers: Federal, CCI, Blazer (now a sub-brand of CCI), Hevi-Shot, Estate Cartridge, Speer, and Alliant Powder. Yes, the Alliant which makes Bullseye and Blue Dot is descended from the same Alliant that built solid rocket motors for the Space Shuttle.
Remington Goes Foreign
In 2024, just four years after buying up Remington, Vista announced its intention to sell itself off, soliciting separate bids for its two constituent business units: the outdoor products unit, Revelyst, and the shooting sports unit, The Kinetic Group. The former was bought just last month by Strategic Value Partners, LLC, for $1.1 billion, while the latter was bought in November by none other than the Czechoslovak Group (CSG), a multinational military-industrial conglomerate which by now has gobbled up more than 100 companies. Sources differ on the exact price of the acquisition, but CSG spent between $1.91 billion and about $2.2 billion for Alliant, CCI, Federal, Hevi-Shot, Remington Ammunition, and Speer. Those companies joined Fiocchi, Bascheri & Pellagri, and Lyalvale Express in the “Ammo+” business unit of CSG.
As of this writing, CSG’s American ammunition brands are still managed by The Kinetic Group, headquartered in Anoka, Minnesota. It has retained its C-suite, made up mostly of career corporate suits inherited from ATK. Whether or not the executives have any knowledge or even interest in firearms and ammunition is unclear, but what is immediately apparent is that they have done a better job running their half of Remington than their counterparts on the firearm side.
The Remington Ammunition plant in Lonoke, Arkansas appears to be operating normally judging by the good availability of its products and the announcement of new ones at SHOT last month. Unlike the new owners of RemArms, The Kinetic Group has kept its inherited Remington factory in operation, although the Lonoke ammunition plant, which opened in 1969, is much newer its firearm counterpart in New York.
Although it feels bad that such historic ammunition companies as Federal and Remington are now owned by a faceless foreign conglomerate, all outward signs seem to indicate that that conglomerate is at least allowing Remington Ammunition to function properly. Granted, that business was not sold from Freedom Group with the same history of shoddy quality control as its firearm manufacturing counterpart had, so Vista Outdoor may have had an easier time running its chunk of Remington than Roundhill has, but the reasons are immaterial from a consumer’s perspective. What matters is that the company manufactures quality products for reasonable prices, and insofar as any ammunition prices are reasonable nowadays, Remington Ammunition appears to satisfy those criteria.