Overview
Nitradyn combines Paligen’s expertise in designing and building advanced chemical manufacturing facilities with Dyno Nobel’s more than 160 years of explosives production. The partners each own 50%. Its mission is to be the defense industry’s premier provider of safe, agile and dependable energetic material, restoring U.S. energetics manufacturing capacity, expanding domestic production of foundational materials and developing the next generation of energetics.
The partnership began in 2024, when Paligen and Dyno Nobel joined forces to design and build the first TNT plant in the United States since the 1980s, in Graham, Kentucky, under a $435 million U.S. Army contract. In 2026 Nitradyn was awarded a $581 million U.S. Department of War contract to design, build and commission a new IMX-104 plant next to it, with capacity of about 8 million pounds a year. Together the two plants form the core of an advanced explosives campus intended to be the most modern and diverse explosives manufacturing hub in the Western world.
Nitradyn is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, and led by President Braden Lusk, PhD, PE, former President of Dyno Nobel Americas and founder of the University of Kentucky Explosives Research Team.
- Core energetic materials: RDX/HMX, NTO, TNT, DNAN and IMX
- Explosive products: HMX, CL-20 and LLM-105
- Coated explosives: Comp A3, Comp A4 and Comp C4
- Melt-pour explosives: IMX-101, Octol, Cyclotol, Comp B, Tritonal, Pentolite and the PAX series
- TNT and IMX-104 plants on an integrated Kentucky campus
- Testing facilities and R&D platforms for next-generation energetics
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