I don't know whether this is good news, bad news, or what. It may not be either one, just interesting.

Received my annual packet for the Olin (Winchester ammo, amongst other things) stockholder's meeting yesterday. Reading it, I find this regarding Winchester brand ammo:

"The total amount of contract backlog was approxmately $231.2 million as of January 31, 2010. Backlog is comprised of all open customer orders not yet shipped. Approximately 70% of contracted backlog as of January 31., 2010 is expected to be filled during 2010."

That means that 30% of orders already in their hands as of January 31, 2010, are NOT expected to be filled this year...or about $70,000,000.00 worth.

Did any one speak to dropped orders. You know many customers will order from other sources as well as Winchester. Then "drop" their order from whom ever doesn't fill the order.
I'll bet with the hysteric buying/hoarding going on for the past couple years that the above is a sizable number.
Just my thoughts. May be way off base?

muck

That may be why I got a batch of junk Winchester brass. I bought one hundred 300 wsm brass from Cabelas online. Sixteen of them would not fit in my case holder, so I could not resize them. There was a significant number of them that had the flash holes way off center. I called Cabelas and they appologized and said to send them back, which I did.

The next day I went into a sporting goods store in Clare, Michigan and I bought 100 from them. I looked at them closely in the package and they looked good (for Win brass). I just finished resizing them and all fit in my case holder. Very few looked to have flash holes off center.

I picked up 100 pcs. (2) bags of 7 Rem Mag brass in January. I looked through it all and found an astonishing 10 pcs had cracks in the necks.

I sent it all back and two weeks later I got a call from them. They apologized and told me they would send me 150 pcs (3) bags for my trouble. They did however apologize again for being forced to send me the exact same lot# as the brass I sent back as they have not ran any 7Mag bras since early Nov.09 and had no plans to do so for the next several months. I was offered a refund but took the new brass offer.

I checked the new brass and found the same problems and the same scrap rate 15 pcs with cracks and voids in the necks.

I hate to say this but I hope in the future they do a better job. I have always liked using Winchester brass.

quote:

Originally posted by muck:
Did any one speak to dropped orders. You know many customers will order from other sources as well as Winchester. Then "drop" their order from whom ever doesn't fill the order.
I'll bet with the hysteric buying/hoarding going on for the past couple years that the above is a sizable number.
Just my thoughts. May be way off base?

muck

Muck,of course you are right about individuals. But, these are not orders from individuals which they are addressing in my quote above. They are contracted orders from wholesalers & jobbers who supply dealers, and other organizations which buy in very large numbers.

Of course contracts can be cancelled too, but I doubt if the rate of cancellation is as high as orders which do not involve contracts.

And the quote above does not take into account any orders at all which they may have received since January 31, 2010, nor any which they may receive during the rest of this year. So, they are predicting they will not be able to produce enough this year to fill 30% of the orders they already had in hand in January.

I don't know how accurate that info is, but it IS a direct quote from the printed report by the corporate management to the stockholders.