Norma's history
Norma - more than 100 years
1895 Norma Projektilfabrik A/S is founded in Oslo, Norway.
1902 A unit is opened in Åmotfors, with one member of staff and two machines.
1911 A factory is built.
1940 Rapid expansion. 10 new factory buildings are added.
1942 The company now employs 800 staff.
1950 Norma starts exporting ammunition for hunting.
1965 The merger of Norma and its competitor Svenska Metallverken.
1967 The new factory is opened. It employs 530 members of staff and manufactures 64 million cartridges.
1975 Hasselfors Bruk AB becomes the new owner. Now 65 million cartridges are manufactured.
1979 FFV becomes the new owner. Rationalisation of the corporate structure. Military production moves to Vanäsverken.
1990 Dynamit Nobel AB becomes the new owner.
2002 Ruag Ammotec AG becomes new owner.
2011 Output reaches 30 million rounds of ammunition in 106 different calibers.
2013 Norma continues to grow and provide hunting and competitive ammunition for shooting demands around the world, with more than 110 calibers.
2013 Norma adds new line extensions in the US market and expands US product distribution.
2017 Norma acquires shotshell factory Gyttorp.
2021 The NORMA factory reaches record high 100 million produced cartridges/year.
2022 Beretta Holding becomes new owner.
The beginning- 1902
Norma was founded in 1902 by the Enger brothers from Oslo, Norway, who had founded Norma Projektilfabrik A/S a few years earlier.The name “Norma” has nothing to do with the word “Norge”, which is the Norwegian word for Norway, although you might think so. No, quite simply one of the brothers was extremely keen on the opera by Bellini, entitled Norma. The Swedish shooting movement needed a supplier in Sweden, and a request was made for Norma Projektilfabrik A/S to set up in Sweden: at this time, Sweden and Norway were both part of a union. The brothers took a train to Sweden and set up their business in Åmotfors, some 20 kilometers from the border to Norway.
Modern ways of thinking
From the very beginning, and until halfway through the 20th century, the company’s business was dominated by the production of military ammunition and ammunition for rifles, but the range of hunting equipment gradually became more and more interesting. Norma started to make contacts on the international market at this time. This, together with the company’s interest in the military, resulted in modern ways of thinking and led to new products with outstanding precision.
Nils Kvale
Nils Kvale, together with Roy Weatherby has been an invaluable part of Norma’s enormous success during the latter half of the 20th century. At the same time, he was a fantastic visionary and an extremely talented developer of products. It was possible to introduce a range of new calibers to the market in the 1960s. Not least, Nils Kvale’s co-operation with colleagues in the USA helped to put Norma on the world map as a manufacturer of top-quality rifle ammunition.
Norma’s cartridges Alaska, Vulkan and, later on, Oryx, are now familiar to hunters all over the world.
Norma today
Our head office and production is in Åmotfors, Värmland, 400 km west of Stockholm, approximately 270 km north of Gothenburg and 130 km east of Oslo. Nowadays, Norma manufactures around 30 million cartridges in more than 100 calibers each year. This means that Norma offers one of the biggest ranges of ammunition in the world, and that stockists all over the world are offered a complete, high-class range of products from one and the same supplier – Norma.