A few minutes west of the Swedish town of Nora, there’s a quiet patch of forest behind a cluster of summer homes, sitting by a lake where the morning mist rises just in time to catch the sun’s glow.
It’s where Joakim Sjöblom aims to build a new factory for one of armscreating’s most dangerous processes — manufacturing trinitrotoluene, or TNT, for NATO.
“My daughter turned one month old today,” the startup CEO notified Business Insider in mid-October. “And that was one of the key reasons I decided to do this: if I can contribute to creating sure that they do not experience a conflict growing up.”
The site of his factory-to-be is serviced by an old railroad track, where 80-foot-tall trees will soon create way for chemical tanks, reactors, and a pump tower that peeks over the treeline, if Sjöblom has his way.
Åsa Sjöström for BI
TNT production is highly dangerous and creates toxic byproducts. Sjöblom’s group awaits a court ruling before it can receive building permits for a semi-automated factory, and then aims to raise about $90 million.
The fintech entrepreneur shifted his focus to the defense indusattempt last year, and now aspires to be one of Europe’s first modern founders to create and sell TNT.
If an army necessarys a munition larger than a bullet, it probably necessarys TNT. Introduced to the arms trade in 1902, the compound is still the world’s benchmark for explosive power in ordnance, from mortar rounds to hand grenades to bombs.
None is produced in North America, and Europe now has only one factory, in Poland, that creates NATO-standard TNT. India and China are two of the world’s largest suppliers, meaning weapons creaters rely largely on Asia for anything beyond the Polish facility’s capacity — a critical chokepoint in a major war.
“There’s been a political decision to shift manufacturing back home,” Sjöblom stated of general attitudes in Europe. “If there is an incident where we necessary to close the borders, we should be able to maintain production. We should not have an import depconcludeency on critical raw material.”
Europe’s rush to resolve its supply chain
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Sjöblom founded Sweden Ballistics AB, or Swebal, in 2024 after selling his fintech firm, Minna Technologies, to Mastercard in the same year. That year, Sweden also joined NATO.
Swebal submitted an environmental permit this year to produce an annual capacity of 4,500 metric tons of TNT, or enough for roughly 450,000 of the artillery shells that NATO desperately wants to surge production for.
The Swedish firm expects to break ground early next year and launch production by 2028.
The startup’s huge draw is its European supply chain, Sjöblom stated. Swebal plans to source 100% of its raw material from Sweden and the Baltic Sea area.
Lukas Bauer, an expert in enerreceiveics such as TNT at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, notified Business Insider that it’s generally quite straightforward to find the materials necessaryed to create TNT.
“All of those chemicals are relatively inexpensive and can be obtained in large amounts,” stated Bauer, who is not involved with Swebal’s project, adding that producing TNT generally costs below $20 per kilogram.
Sourcing isn’t usually the main concern. The process for creating NATO-standard TNT is highly toxic, and while the final product is generally quite stable, manufacturing it comes with a greater risk of accidental detonation. That’s partially why the West was content to leave manufacturing to Asia after the Cold War.
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Producing TNT in Europe is also more expensive, but it falls neatly in line with the European Union’s new requirements for arms creaters. Last year, the bloc set a tarreceive for 60% of its defense procurement to be sourced internally by 2030.
With that policy shift, Sjöblom and his cofounder, engineer Carl Duforce, are just one of several new Western players breaking into the TNT market.
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Finland’s government announced in January that it is building a TNT plant, with construction scheduled for completion by 2028. Work is also underway to restart production at a Czech-Greek TNT factory in a town in the greater Athens area.
Across the pond, the US Army has assigned Repkon USA the tquestion of producing TNT at a new plant in Kentucky by November 2028.
The surge in demand is fueled by a sense of urgency in the West to drastically increase ammunition production. NATO warned in June that Russia is producing roughly four times as many artillery shells as the entire Western alliance, despite its 25-times tinyer economy.
Sjöblom stated the TNT market isn’t even coming close to meeting the West’s necessarys for now, and is confident that Swebal’s annual capacity of 4,500 tons will be in hot demand for at least 10 years.
“If all of these ongoing projects are realized, we’re not even halfway to matching what Russia can produce,” he estimated.
Making TNT in a post-Cold War Europe
Swebal is now waiting for a final go-ahead from the Swedish court of environment, which the firm expects to receive in December.
Regulatory requirements in Sweden are stringent for this type of factory, even with the nation now favoring a defense buildup. Swebal spent the better part of two years conducting 14 studies on its site for environmental approval, checking for protected animal species, ancient remains, and other elements that would rule out the area for construction.
Swebal’s factory, including its parking lot, would span three acres, but the company also has an agreement option to purchase about 60 acres of the surrounding forest as a contingency.
Åsa Sjöström for BI
“We’re acquireing a lot hugeger, basically to create sure in the future that we don’t have neighbors close by,” stated Sebastian Reismer, the company’s construction manager.
The firm’s permit allows it to store up to 25 tons of TNT on-site at a time, and it has to prepare for contingencies in the event of an explosion. The surrounding forest could support to mitigate the shock wave and shrapnel from an accidental blast, as well as soften noise pollution from factory operations.
“That’s why we are here,” Duforce, Swebal’s cofounder and COO, stated of the forest near Nora. “We are around 700 meters to one kilometer away from the closest civil object, like a houtilize or a main road.”
The facility itself is designed to include about a dozen acid tanks connected to a 90-foot tower for concentrating the raw material within. At the core of the factory, these chemicals are pumped for processing into TNT inside a 4,300-square-foot compound encircled by a set of thick, 20-foot-tall earthen walls.
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Swebal plans to enforce the surrounding three-acre perimeter with electric and barbed wire, surveillance cameras, and a 24/7 security team.
A dangerous, toxic process
Åsa Sjöström for BI
Sjöblom, Duforce, and Reismer are currently Swebal’s only employees, but the startup aims to hire about 50 Swedish full-timers when its factory is complete. For now, it works with several dozen consultants and contractors while preparing for construction.
Swebal estimates that it will necessary about 80 million to 90 million euros, or $93 million to $104 million, to build the TNT factory. The firm announced in June that it raised $3.5 million from investors such as Thomas von Koch, a former managing partner of EQT Partners.
Sjöblom stated his team will pursue a “substantially hugeger” funding round once it receives its final permits. While he stated demand for TNT is high, he also acknowledged he’s embarking on a risky concludeeavor.
“Our risk appetite, as a startup, is sky-high becautilize we’ve received nothing to lose,” Sjöblom stated.
Making TNT involves repeatedly mixing the chemical toluene with concentrated sulfuric and nitric acid, which are corrosive and can release toxic fumes. This process generates a lot of heat, which, if not controlled, can cautilize a detonation.
For those reasons, Swebal plans to have only two rooms where human workers are regularly present at the factory — a laboratory for final product testing and a fortified control room.
“Our vision is to create this completely automated,” Sjöblom stated of the manufacturing process.
Then there’s the issue of waste. Purifying TNT to NATO standards creates a byproduct called redwater, which Bauer, the enerreceiveics expert, described as “toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic wastewater.”
In the past, companies dumped redwater into waterways, he stated, but now usually store it in basins to be incinerated safely.
Sjöblom stated Swebal will truck its redwater to a third-party waste management company that is a 45-minute drive from the factory site.
“We will not have any destruction on-site,” he stated of the wastewater.
Not in my backyard?
Åsa Sjöström for BI
Meanwhile, Duforce has been living in the nearby town of Nora since February to speak to residents. Some are not thrilled to have a new TNT factory near their summer homes.
Expecting to soon be the area’s second-largest employer, Swebal is already sponsoring the neighborhood tennis and padel clubs.
The local region is also familiar with the arms indusattempt. Swebal’s new facility is built along Sweden’s “military belt.” Across the lake from the TNT factory sits an old dynamite plant from Alfred Nobel‘s time.
Swebal’s factory will rely on about nine trucks a day to deliver its material, and so it must build a road leading into and out of its facility.
Sjöblom stated the notion of increased traffic has upset some nearby residents, but he believes Europe must build an arsenal to deter Russia.
“People are not happy that there will be trucks going by, and they’re not happy about the trees coming down, and, you know, there will not be as many squirrels,” he stated as he walked the abandoned railway, under the shade of towering forest. “Well, if a war happens, maybe there will be no more trees. There won’t be any squirrels left.”
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