Europe’s grand plans to surge ammunition production hinge on a single factory in central Poland – the only place in the EU that still makes trinitrotoluene, or TNT, the explosive core of most weapons production.

Since Russia’s war on Ukraine, Europeans have scrambled to fire back up munitions production lines, left to wither during years of peace on the continent. But producers have struggled to suddenly crank out millions more artillery shells and other weaponry.

The kind of grinding warfare being waged in Ukraine, with huge volumes of artillery being fired by both sides, has illustrated how essential a strong European defence industrial base would be in facing down the Russian threat.

But TNT production is heavily polluting, toxic and energy-intensive, and for decades, Europe has outsourced that 'dirty' work elsewhere – particularly to China, Turkey, the Balkans, and Ukraine – until only the Nitro-Chem plant in Bydgoszcz, Poland, remained.