I’ve heard of these powders, but never used them. What do they bring to the table that Bullseye, 231, Unique, Red Dot, and 2400 don’t? Arethey cheaper, cleaner burning, or what?
Shooters World (Lovex) powders and Vectan powders.
In 2013-2015 most smokeless powders, in particular shotgun/pistol canister powders were in very short supply. By the end of 2015 most powders were becoming available however sometimes still a problem finding them. Probably the most elusive and certainly the last canister powder to re-appear was AA#2.
Anyway, in an effort to satisfy the demand for those powders several distributers of smokeless powders searched the world and were able to import Lovex and Vectan. As mentioned Lovex is made by Explosia in the Czech Republic. This factory at one time supplied Western with their ball powders. I have several pounds of AA#2 from the time it was made there.
With canister powders the suppliers generally fill orders to their commercial customers and then what is left over gets put out for us to buy.
Western made the decision to ignore handloaders, there was a time of almost 3 years when AA#2 and #5 were simply not available. Lovex filled the need. Personally I would rather pay a little more for Shooters World than to buy anything from Western, I think they treated their customer base very poorly during the shortage.
There was a fire in the plant that made Hodgdon Clays. For that powder there was at least a good excuse for the absence of the material. It took so long for the plant to get running that Alliant sourced a substitute (Clay Dot) to try to take away Hodgdons Clays. Alliant did this I think in part to hide the fact that they couldn't source American Select so they might have picked up some of Hodgdons customers but lost their American Select buyers.
Vectan is another European powder. Many years ago it was imported but then it was stopped, now it's back thanks to the above mentioned shortage. If you look in the Lee annual there are loads using Vectan powders.
