Nitradyn said it has been awarded a $581 million contract from the Pentagon to design, construct and commission a new domestic Insensitive Munition Explosive‑104 (IMX‑104) production facility in Graham, Kentucky.
IMX-104, a mixture of three explosives, RDX, NTO, and DNAN, is an explosive formulation used across multiple defense applications. With the commissioning of the new facility, Nitradyn will manufacture all of these constituent explosives plus the critical explosive, HMX.
Additionally, the new facility will be located at the same Graham, Kentucky site where the U.S. Army is constructing a facility for the production of TNT, creating a diverse explosives manufacturing campus.
The award marks a milestone for Nitradyn, which was founded in 2025 to manufacture and supply explosives, propellants, and energetic materials for both defense and commercial customers. Once complete, the facility is expected to produce approximately 8 million pounds of IMX-104 annually, and is expected to have excess capacity to produce other formulations.
"This contract is an investment in America's ability to produce critical munitions. The incorporation of this project into the same site as the TNT project gives the Department of War a true advanced explosives manufacturing campus, with capability to produce a diverse range of formulations, and we look forward to bringing it all online," said Nitradyn President Braden Lusk in a statement.
The new facility is expected to be fully commissioned before the end of 2030.
