Byrna Technologies CEO Bryan Ganz discusses the company’s efforts to strengthen its US manufacturing operations.
The defense products company has spent the last few years moving much of its production to the US and is finding the benefits go beyond the ability to put “Made in America” label on their products.
Byrna Technologies, which makes non-lethal safety devices capable of introducing plastic or chemical irritant cycles, delivered the main one. production area from South Africa to Indiana in 2021 and began finding suitable US parts suppliers to prevent supply chain disruptions such as those that occur during violence.
“There are over 100 parts that go into our launchers, we wanted them all to be inoperable,” Byrna Technologies CEO Bryan Ganz told FOX Business. “Typically, offshore producers were less expensive, so they got more production.”
Byrna Technologies has moved its main manufacturing facility from South Africa to Indiana in 2021. (Sam Wolfe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“But when it became clear that Donald Trump was going to be elected president, we said, ‘You know what, he’s been talking a lot about tariffs, this is a good time to start the process of bringing the supply chain back to the coast,'” Ganz said.
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“We started this before the prices were announced. When the prices were announced, we felt smart about ourselves as we thought well that we would be able to do things on the coast,” he added.
Ganz said that while the process of adding more to Byrna’s supply chain before the Trump administration expenses were introduced last year, prices made domestic production more expensive and the process of access to the coast revealed other benefits.
“It’s been great because not only has it been much cheaper in terms of pricing to produce in the US, but we’ve also had all kinds of soft cost benefits,” he said.
Byrna Technologies moved its manufacturing back to the US before President Donald Trump implemented the tariffs. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“If you’re supplying parts from overseas, you probably have it material in the air costs, you have a long sea journey – if you offer it a hundred miles by truck, you can be very responsive to changes in consumer demand. If I need to visit a factory because there is a quality problem, I can.”
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He added that while Byrna continues to buy some of its equipment from offshore suppliers, the company is focusing its efforts to shore up the most important aspects of its product, such as the launcher itself and its ammunition.
“We do protective products and I think the quality of the product, the credibility of the product, is really important to our consumers, so the Made in America moniker is very important to our brand,” he explained.
Ganz noted that Byrna closed its ammunition manufacturing facility in South Africa and moved it to a newly constructed facility in Fort Wayne five miles from the company’s explosives manufacturing facility.
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The company’s latest launcher, the Byrna CL, was made with 34% US components before the retrofit effort, but the launcher is now made with 92% US components.
“It’s not without some costs. We saw a few percentage points increase in our costs because of bringing it back to the US, because of course, we would have done it in the US to begin with if it was the same price,” said Ganz. “But our margins are always within two percent – last year we were 62% and this year we were 60.5-61% – so there was little impact on costs.”
Ganz added that prices it has been a deciding factor in some of its decisions to reschedule because of the high cost of import duties.
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“If we send something up, although it may be 10% less expensive than building here, it is not the same if you put a 30% tax. I am a patriot, I like to do things here in America. On the other hand, we are a public company, we have shareholders – we have to look at what is in the best interest of our shareholders,” he said. “With taxes, it became clear that it was less expensive to build in the US than to build on the coast.”
Ganz added that Byrna keeps some parts manufactured abroad to maintain redundancy in the supply chain to avoid risks that would arise if the home site was unexpectedly offline, but the current pressure has brought the company’s supply chain to 80%-90% range of parts available at home.
