The story of Federal ammunition began in the fall of 1916 when brothers Louis and Harry Sherman began construction on an ammunition plant in Anoka, Minnesota. The Sherman brothers had previously worked in ammunition production for Western Cartridge and other, smaller brands in the early 1900s before investing in their own ammunition manufacturing facility. The Federal Cartridge and Machine Company was incorporated in 1916. The following year, the first Federal shotshell was produced.
Despite their background in shotshell production the Sherman brothers failed to anticipate many of the complications involved with ammunition production. Problems included low output and a lack of sales and marketing professionals. By 1920 the new factory plant in Anoka sat idle.
Federal ammunition might have been relegated to a footnote in Anoka’s history were it not for Charles Horn. He was 34 at the time and owner of American Ball Company in Minneapolis. He learned about the embattled Federal Cartridge and Machine company while trying to find a way to manufacture steel balls for air rifles. Horn wanted to purchase part of the plant but was persuaded to buy the entire facility.
Working with T.W. Lewis (the only remaining stockholder), Horn provided the funding to bring the old company out of receivership. This venture proved successful, and on April 27, 1922, Federal Cartridge Corporation was incorporated. Horn and Lewis were the only two stockholders. Horn also hired John Haller, who had been the old company’s plant manager until the 1920 closure. With Charles Horn at the helm, Lewis as treasurer, and Haller overseeing daily operations, the Federal Cartridge Company was ready to take on the world. This was the beginning of the company we know today.
Spark of Innovation
Horn was a savvy businessman and a hard worker who was willing to work right alongside his employees (until Haller asked him to stop — Horn admittedly knew nothing of ammunition production and his good intentions ultimately resulted in broken equipment and lost revenue). Under Horn’s guidance, Federal flourished. In 1924 the company began producing .22 rimfire ammunition and two years later Federal Favorite shotshells were available in 12, 16, and 20 gauge and .410 bore. When shotshell production began in 1922, Federal consisted of seven full-time employees, but by 1930 the number of employees had grown to more than 500.
In 1925, Franklin W. Olin, who founded the Western Cartridge Company in 1898, became one of the primary stockholders at Federal. By 1932 Olin owned Federal Cartridge Company and he named Charles Horn as the company president. Olin had purchased Winchester in 1931, and in 1938 ownership of Federal was transferred to the Olin Foundation (to prevent accusations of collusion and price fixing) with Horn remaining as president.
Three years later, Horn secured an $87 million contract from the United States government to build and operate the Twin City Ordnance Plant in New Brighton, Minnesota, just 10 miles from Anoka. That factory would play a vital role in production during World War II, and Federal Cartridge Company Vice President R.B. Ehlen managed production of .30 and .50 caliber ammunition. The Twin City Ordnance Plant employed 25,000 workers by 1943 and by 1945, when the government contract was terminated, the TCOP had produced more than 5 billion rounds of ammunition — far more than the 100 million rounds requested in the initial contract.
During construction of the Twin City Ordnance Plant 65 Federal employees traveled to Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia for instruction on the manufacture of centerfire ammunition. This training proved critical for the war effort but also the future of the company since until that time no Federal employee had experience produce centerfire rifle and handgun ammunition. The war effort (the TCOP would be closed following World War II, reactivated from 1950 to 1957 for the Korean War, and again from 1965 to 1971 for the Vietnam War) provided Federal with the tools and knowledge to manufacture handgun and rifle ammunition, and in 1963 the company added those products to their catalog. Two years later Federal introduced the first plastic shotgun shell hulls, and the following year the company began color coding their shells to prevent accidents.
Horn, who had been president of Federal since its inception in 1922, stepped away from that post in 1974 and became chairman of the board. His son William Horn became the president of the corporation and remained in that position until the Olin Foundation sold it in 1985 (a federal tax reform law passed in 1969 required foundations to relinquish primary ownership of publicly-traded companies within 20 years). Newly formed Federal-Hoffman Inc. took control of Federal Cartridge in 1985 with David Lentz serving as president. At the time of the sale, Federal employed 2,900 people and made in excess of $200 million in profits.
Branching Out
The 1980s were also the time when Federal became deeply involved in conservation efforts. Charles Horn had sat in the Minnesota Emergency Conservation Commission since 1933 and the company ran a series of conservation-themed ads in the 1930s promoting everything from observing bag limits to feeding birds in winter, but in the 1980s Federal became a leading voice for hunter-funded conservation. The company supported Ducks Unlimited, The National Wild Turkey Federation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and other organizations — more than 20 in total — by the end of the 1980s. In the early 1990s, Federal sold “Another Hunter for Conservation” patches for hunting clothing and the proceeds benefitted conservation efforts.
In 1988, Federal was purchased by Pentair, Incorporated and Ron Mason became president of the company. At the time of purchase, Federal shotshells dominated The Grand trap shoot each year, having won over 70% of the titles awarded at the event since 1982. The company had also expanded their line of steel shot, which prepared them for the 1992 ban on lead shot for hunting waterfowl (Federal had been loading steel shot since 1973), and in 1989 the company developed the first 3½-inch 12-gauge shotgun shell in conjunction with Mossberg.
But perhaps the biggest product announcement of the 1980s occurred in 1989. Federal’s new Hydra-Shok bullet set a new standard for performance on the FBI protocol for defensive ammunition. Hydra-Shok and bullets derived from it are still standard-bearing bullets in law enforcement and self-defense.
Mason invested a great deal of money in research and development to achieve the impossible: an American cartridge winning a gold medal at the Olympics. That’s exactly what happened at the 1992 games in Barcelona: the U.S. Shooting Team captured gold and silver medals in rifle using Federal’s Gold Medal UltraMatch .22 rimfire ammunition, the first medal won by an American-made load since 1960.
The success of Gold Medal UltraMatch ammunition ushered in an era of product development for Federal. Between 1990 and 1997 over 300 new products were released, including BallistiClean pistol ammo and the very first tungsten non-toxic waterfowl load, and Ron Mason stated in a 1997 interview with Shooting Times that a quarter of the company’s sales came from products released in the previous five years.
In 1997 the company was purchased by Alabama-based Blount Industries for $112 million. Blount also owned other shooting-sports companies like CCI, Speer, and more as part of their Sporting Equipment Group. Two years after the acquisition was Blount sold to New York-based Lehman Brothers who, in turn, placed the company’s sporting equipment group for sale in 2001.
A New Era
Federal Ammunition was purchased by Minnesota-based aerospace and defense company Alliant Techsystems (ATK) in 2001. Four years later the company released their first branded cartridge, the 338 Federal, and two years later that was followed by the 327 Federal Magnum handgun cartridge. Meanwhile, product introductions like Personal Defense HST, Black Cloud waterfowl ammunition, molecularly bonded Fusion rifle ammunition, and Heavyweight turkey loads revolutionized entire categories, giving hunters and shooters longer-range, harder-hitting options.
In 2015, ATK spun off its collection of outdoor brands, creating an altogether new corporation called Vista Outdoor, with Federal as one of the flagship brands. The decades of innovation that preceded the shift continued running strong under the new ownership structure. Products like Syntech, the polymer coated ammunition, rewrote the book on how bullets are built — not to mention how they shoot, what they do to your gun, and what they don’t put into the air in the form of airborne lead.
Federal continued in 2017 with the introduction of an all-new cartridge that changed the AR-15 platform, what it can do and how it’s used. The 224 Valkyrie was developed by Federal’s team of engineers. It was the first AR-15 cartridge to stay supersonic past 1,300 yards, with flatter trajectories than anything in its class at the time, with far less recoil than larger cartridges with comparable ballistics.
The innovation kept running strong in 2018, when Jason Vanderbrink took the wheel as president of Federal Ammunition. In the years that followed, Federal rolled scores of new products — the most in company history — including Terminal Ascent rifle ammunition. It features the ultimate all-range hunting bullet, one Vanderbrink calls the best ever made.
“To build and market better ammunition, we need to stay obsessed with accuracy and our dedication to high standards of performance,” says Vanderbrink, who has led the company through the recent ammo shortage and will help navigate the brand through the next chapter in Federal’s long history.
By 2022, Federal became well-known as one of the leading ammunition brands in the world, and rightfully so. With strong leadership and a continued commitment to new product development, the company will certainly remain at the top of the ammunition market for another century.
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