Rheinmetall to supply further artillery ammunition to Ukraine via NATO country

Rheinmetall will tap into the production capabilities of its newly acquired Spanish subsidiary Expal Systems to produce tens-of-thousands of shells under a €142 million (US$154 million) deal whereby a NATO nation will provide the artillery to Ukraine for use against invading Russian forces.

The order was for 155mm artillery shells, including the projectile, fuse (for the explosive charge), propellant and primer (for igniting the propellant).

The ammunition will be delivered in 2025. Production and delivery of around 40,000 rounds for Ukraine from an earlier order has already been due to take place in 2024.

Rheinmetall currently has multiyear framework contracts for supplying the German Bundeswehr with several hundred rounds of artillery ammunition worth more than €1 billion.

As recently as mid-October 2023, the German government placed an order with Rheinmetall for more than 100,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition earmarked for Ukraine – once again from Rheinmetall Expal Munitions – as well as additional DM 121 high explosive shells. The order was worth a figure in the mid-three-digit million-euro range.

The company has highlighted substantial demand for artillery shells from Ukraine, as well as to replenish the largely empty ammunition depots of Germany and other NATO and EU countries. It said it had planned ‘a massive increase in ammunition production capacity in 2024 at its plants in Germany, Spain, South Africa and Australia, bringing annual output capacity to around 700,000 artillery rounds’.

Rheinmetall has also been contracted to supply mortar ammunition to Ukraine under a multi-billion-dollar framework deal signed earlier this year and recently announced it would deliver approximately 100,000 rounds of 120mm mortar ammunition to the Ukraine under an order from the German government described as in the ‘lower-three-digit million-euro range’.