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In the copper wire business, there are distributers that buy product from manufacturers months in advance to keep their supply chains full. This is a tight rope walk, if too much is in the supply chain you can't sell it all fast enough. Too little in the chain and you run out of product.

It is usually purchased using "blanket" orders that can cover a period of time as long as a year in advance. The reason a blanket order is placed is to secure pricing. The distibuter commits to buy x-number of pounds over the course of the contract at x-dollars a pound. The manufacturer in turn will have committed to buy x-number of tons of material to meet this demand at x-dollars a ton from the mines and smelters.

Wire orders are placed and released from the blanket until the blanket is near it's end. The buyer for a distributer will have been watching Comex (copper futures) so he knows what the price of raw copper is going to be to the manufacturers that he buys from. When it's time to place another blanket, he can guess pretty well what his new prices should be. He then starts shopping manufacturers to see who wants to do another blanket.

The length of the next blanket is determined on how volitile the market is at the time. If copper futures are steady and have been for months and no mines have shut down or opened then a short term blanket will do. If the market is going up and mines are closing (or demand by China has increased) it's time to buy big so you can hold your prices lower than your competitors for a longer time. Or (if you are confident in your sales) you make a killing by raising your prices when your competitors do even though you still have cheaper product in your supply chain.

I'm sure the ammo gig is probably similar. The manufacturers are watching the futures too. And right now they are at a 2 month high and I don't see much reason to expect it to fall. China and India are still buying metals heavily, and the war is using up a lot of material.

I have no way of knowing what kind of blankets or contracts the ammo makers have right now. But it's been a year since the last big increase (July 06) so an increase now is no surprise. It's also not a surprise to have the other manufacturers follow suit after the first one announces a price increase. They are in business to make money not to supply us with cheap ammo. As long as demand stays high and metal futures are high prices will high. It's the American way. And in this environment... 12% isn't really price gouging.

I would expect another one next year too. Just my 2 cents.

TA