Back in 2011 Nigel Cole-Hawkins of Commonside Firearms was searching for a propellant that would produce better results than N150, when used in the .308W and a 200gn bullet for the Match Rifle shooting at 1000-1200yds at Bisley. At the time N150 was the ‘go to’ propellant for this discipline.

While looking at the technical qualities of propellants from all the major suppliers Nigel came across Alliant RL17 and after reading a very interesting article written by German Salazar and Bob Jensen - https://www.accurateshooter.com/technical-articles/reloading/alliant-reloder-17/ I decided it could have the right qualities.

German and Bob g0t right to the bottom of why RL17 is such a technically advanced propellant and why it has no equal in the marketplace. This remains the same today.

After buying a quantity of Alliant RL17 Nigel and a few colleagues did some testing. This produced ‘game changing’ results, so he decided to try and import the propellant to the U.K. directly from Nitrochemie, the manufacturer in Switzerland. A call was made to the factory in Switzerland and their reply was, how many tons do you want.

After some negotiations 500kg was purchased. Then came the regulatory hurdles, transportation and licencing rules. Eventually approvals were granted by BAM in Germany, the HSE in the U.K. and a marketing name approved Elcho 17. The product was and immediate success in the U.K. market and was then followed by another propellant called TR 140. This was a single based propellant with similar qualities to Vihtavuori N140.

It was soon apparent to Nitrochemie that they had missed a trick by not selling canister grade reloading propellants to shooters. With that in mind and help from Nigel they decided to launch Reload Swiss and the rest is history.