Globally Hodgdon isn't that big of a factor, and while they own a lot of US brands.....they don't own the production facilities that supply the powder for most of those labels. Until recently, Hodgdon didn't actually own any production facilities, I think that's only happened in the last decade with some of their acquisitions. Lots of Hodgdon powders come from plants all over the world, some of their most popular powders come out of a plant in Australia which was forced to shut down for a while during the pandemic. The biggest factor affecting smokeless powder was a global nitrocellulose shortage beginning in 2019. Note: NC is also used in other areas, notably Covid testing kits. Both General Dynamics and Explosia reported idled powder plants because of interrupted NC supplies. Other raw element shortages have impacted a LOT of areas relating to shooting.......copper, zinc, lead have all gone up several hundred percent, and shortages impacted brass companies, primer companies. If you can't get NC, you can't make powder. If you can't get the raw material for NC, you can't make powder, if you can't get copper, you can't make brass. If you don't have these things, your production idles. If you want to make product, you HAVE to pay market rate for the raw materials, and you're competing globally for an in demand product in a classic case of demand exceeding current supply, and unfortunately, that has to be passed on to the consumers. To compound matters, when you price products right now, you can't price based on what it cost you to buy supplies last week, you have to price them to cover your best guess on what supplies will cost next week...which contributes to inflation cycle. We're bumping 7.5% inflation economy wide in the US now.......certainly has nothing to do with Hodgdon.........everything is more expensive, and will likely not start coming down for a while. Last week, I got cold offered 55K for my 2018 Ram 2500, which was 10K over what I paid for it new 4 years ago! Did I sell it? Nope.....because It would likely cost far more to replace it, if I could find a replacement. Sign up for your "free" covid test kits? Guess what, that contributed to the NC shortage, and the high cost of powder. Just sayin'.