Steve Faragher, Editor Comments

There were rumours at IWA. We certainly heard that RUAG Ammotec was going to be sold, but it’s credit to Beretta’s team that even at that late stage in the negotiations—three years in!—the trade was still largely in the dark. And now the deal has been revealed the industry is left asking, so what?

I imagine there will be little but beneficial outcomes attached. Some people working for Beretta and RUAG will lose their jobs where they overlap, which will be sad, but hopefully the new organisation will also have plenty of new staffing opportunities as it throws up business, so those staff will be relocated or dealt with generously.

The impact on the UK gun trade will, I suspect, be minimal, at least on the sporting and leisure side. There will probably be a reshuffle of distribution deals that will not be core to Beretta’s business, the plumbest of which looks on paper to be Perazzi. I reached out to Perazzi for comment but heard nothing back before publication. One cannot blame them for keeping their cards close to their chest at the moment. It will be interesting to see where they land.

Guns, guns, guns

I’ve been blown away by the number of new guns we are featuring in this issue—with notification of more appearing what feels like daily in my inbox. This influx of exciting new stock is just what the doctor ordered for our retailers and it looks set to help to produce a very profitable year for you all. It’s heartening to see us enter a hopefully postpandemic world with plenty of great news to share with our public.

Adihex

In my still relatively short time at the helm of Gun Trade News I have never known a reaction like the one we’ve had to the James Gower piece we ran last issue encouraging people to join us at Adihex this year. The enthusiasm for something new, and the sense of a real opportunity to be involved in it, seems to have struck a chord with you all. It’s not too late to get involved—as the ad below suggests—so do get in touch and we’ll see if we can make your Arabian fairytale come true… Steve