DPMS (Defense Procurement Manufacturing Services) Panther Arms manufactures a wide range of military and civilian rifles in Huntsville, Alabama.
Video DPMS Panther Arms
History
Randy Luth founded Defense Procurement Manufacturing Services (DPMS) in 1985 in Osseo, Minnesota as a precision machine shop for manufacturing M203, M14 and M16 parts for U.S. military contracts. He also developed many patents. In the later 1990s he employed 30 people selling Colt 1911 and AR-15 parts and accessories and moved the company to Becker, Minnesota. Luth later worked with a manufacturer of lower receivers and began producing AR-15 modern sporting rifles (MSR).
Luth moved DPMS into a St. Cloud, Minnesota facility next to the Del-Tone/Luth Gun Club in 2004. In 2007 the firm was named one of The Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal's "50 fastest-growing privately held companies." DPMS doubled its revenue between 2004-07 and employed 65 people in 2008.
Freedom Group purchased DPMS Panther Arms on December 14, 2007, the same year it purchased Marlin Firearms. Freedom Group is a consortium of firearms manufacturers and part of Cerberus Capital Management which is a New York private equity investment firm. Cerberus combined DPMS with Bushmaster Firearms International, Remington Arms and Cobb Manufacturing to form the Freedom Group. Remington is the company's immediate corporate parent.
On December 20, 2012, Cerberus announced they were selling their Freedom Group brands, including DPMS, based on pressure from a California pension board. This transaction has failed to occur as of May 2014.
Maps DPMS Panther Arms
Products
The company manufactures AR-15-style rifles chambered for the .223 Remington, 5.56×45mm NATO, .308 Winchester, .260 Remington, .300 Remington Short Action Ultra Magnum, 6.8mm Remington SPC, and .204 Ruger cartridges, among others.
The company attracted attention within the firearms industry with its version of the AR-10, the Panther LR-308, earning the NRA Publication's magazine Shooting Illustrated 2005 Golden Bullseye Award for Rifle of the Year. In 2006 the "Panther LR-308AP4" earned the NRA Publication's magazine American Rifleman Golden Bullseye Award for Rifle of the Year. In 2008, DPMS introduced the LR-338 chambered in the .338 Federal cartridge.
Production relocation
DPMS's St. Cloud production facility with 115 employees was closed and production has been moved to Remington's new state of the art non-union facility in Huntsville, Alabama, which will employ 2,000 people in 10 years. Remington's Ilion, New York, production facility closed down two production lines for their Bushmaster AR modern sporting rifle (MSR) and R-1 1911 pattern pistol and moved them to Huntsville. In 2014 Remington moved production of two gun lines and 150 jobs from New York to Alabama because of New York state's excessive anti-gun laws which banned the sale of those products in the state, and consolidated its production from six locations into Huntsville in order to increase efficiency, and reduce production and labor costs. The six companies being relocated were: Advanced Armament Corp, Lawrenceville, Georgia; Montana Rifleman, Kalispell, Montana; TAPCO, Kennesaw, Georgia; LAR Manufacturing, West Jordan, Utah; Para USA (formerly Para-Ordnance), Pineville, North Carolina; and DPMS, St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Notes
External links
- DPMS Panther Arms
- A Review of the LR-308 from American Rifleman
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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