Tallinn, Estonia energetic materials supplier Wolfram Europa said it will invest €200 million to build a vertically integrated energetics complex near Jēkabpils, Latvia. It has secured a 40-hectare site under a long-term land agreement with Latvijas Valsts Meži, the Latvian state forestry company.
Work will get underway on the site in 2027 and be done in three phases. Wolfram Europa says the complex will create 200 high-skill jobs in the region where it will synthesise explosives, manufacture warheads, and work on counter-mobility solutions — all aimed at expanding the supply of resources that are scarce in Europe but central to the region’s rearmament plans.
At full build-out, the complex will synthesise 300 tonnes of RDX or 100 tonnes of HMX, the company said, with the possibility of further expansion capacity. It will mix end-use compositions such as Composition B, Composition H, Composition A-3, A-4 and A-5, C-4, PBX and others. It plans to fill and assemble 100,000 anti-tank mines and 200,000 warheads a year. The complex is designed to hold up to 1,200 tonnes of net explosive quantity which should keep supplies running through disruption and crisis.
Speaking to Resilience Media today, Magnus-Valdemar Saar, CEO of Wolfram Europa, said that it intends to create more sites in other European countries, including on home soil. The investment into Latvia first comes simply because all the moving parts of construction rights and land lease are now all in place, he added.
We will see two more investments happening later in the year in “two much larger European countries,” he said, and when the Estonian Centre for Defence Investments (ECDI) opens its next round of proposals, Wolfram Europa will be submitting its offer.
“For the last 35 years, Europe has been scaling down its explosives and munitions industry and technological development has stalled with it. Now Europe is rearming, but investment is still focused mainly on platforms and final assembly,” said Saar. “That is the explosives gap: Europe is scaling its weapons faster than the explosives and warheads that make them effective.”
The mission of Wolfram Europa is to close the capacity gap and “make the technological leap — producing world-class explosives and warheads with the most modern technologies and manufacturing methods,” said Saar. The new Latvian site “will be our first major site, but not our last,” he added.
The announcement was made at Jēkabpils by Viktors Valainis, Minister of Economics; Edgars Tavars Minister of Smart Administration and Regional Development; Airis Rikveilis, State Secretary of the Ministry of Defence; Raivis Ragainis, Chairman of Jēkabpils County Municipality and Saar.
The deal “strengthens the involvement of Latvia’s defence industry, promotes the development of technologies and expertise, and demonstrates Latvia’s ambition to become a significant regional hub for defence industry and technology development,” said Rikveilis. “In the long term, the development of Latvia’s defence industry will create additional opportunities to strengthen our national security, resilience of supply chains, and cooperation with our Allies.”
