EN 
ES Last year, 18,572 weapons were manufactured in the country, which means 50 per day and two per hour. This market is decisive in a country that has been at war for more than 60 years. Shotguns and revolvers: the Colombian arms business has positioned itself as one of the most desired in the world. But what few know is that the country manufactures most of the weapons used in the world.
What are the profits from the sale of weapons? How is a gun made and to whom is it sold? Does the country have its own brand?Kienyke.com visited the José María Córdova plant in Indumil, where ammunition, night vision scopes and weapons of all kinds are manufactured
The Colombian market requires a lot of production
Lieutenant Colonel (r) Luis Carlos Perdomo, director of the General José María Córdova factory, says that the sale of weapons depends on the needs of his clients (Military Forces, Police, private security and natural persons). For example, in 2012 this establishment produced 38 thousand rifles for the 400 thousand soldiers that make up the Army. Regarding revolver pistols and shotguns, the business niche focuses particularly on private security and the National Police for which 35 thousand units are designed per year.
Perdomo says that the country that benefits most from Colombian weapons is Israel since the nation has a strategic alliance with the IWI military industry (Israel Weapon Industries). Furthermore, the exports made to Guatemala Honduras Salvador Mexico and the United States guarantee that the Colombian military industry lives off of these operations.
Regarding employment in the weapons factory alone, there are a thousand workers in addition to fifty soldiers who are victims of antipersonnel mines and 200 women who are heads of families.
Córdova a Colombian-style pistol.
The Colombian conflict is a big business for weapons and ammunition manufacturers. According to Indumil representatives, the development experience evident in the national context allowed manufacturers to stop concentrating their efforts on producing parts for others. The raw materials and military experience were in the country, why continue doing the work for others?
After three years of multiple investment efforts and weapons analysis in Colombia, a nine-millimeter pistol, the “Córdova,” began to be manufactured.
The objective of manufacturing a national pistol is based on the substitution of imports of personal defense weapons and the exploration of other markets.
How much money did they invest in the Córdova pistol?
It was a complex issue for us since we are manufacturers of the Jericho pistol that has the Israeli patent. We did the most important parts, we had everything and it was simply taking the step and doing things for ourselves and not for others.
We sat down with the engineers and analyzed the design of what the gun was going to be like. In that research process we spent two billion pesos.
Why Córdova?
By General José María Córdova. From there we take the tradition as well as the name of the factory. The pistol is our flagship product, our strategic product, the first one we are launching in the country has to have the name of the warrior general par excellence. When Bolívar described himself he said: “Córdova is the man of war, Santander is the man of laws and I am the man of problems.” Hence, we are collecting all that tradition to be able to reach not only the Colombian market but also the one abroad.
Who will be your main clients?
Currently selling a rifle is complicated, military forces worldwide are in the process of reduction. This forces our rifles to be modernized. The police and private security are the business niches that we want to cover with Córdova. The police are growing and we want to address these businesses through the national weapon.
The US market is huge. As immense as understanding that Texas is half of Colombia in size, that on the single border between Mexico and the United States there are more than 100 Walmart stores and that each of these stores can be a potential customer of ours.
We have an important opportunity in North America and we have offers to enter this country with the pistol. They have also made requests to us in Central America and here in Colombia we have an important market.
Do you already have some orders locally?
We have a pending issue with the national police. They want to buy about 30 thousand pistols so this would be an excellent deal. We have private security companies that are approaching us to sign contracts. Within the large security companies that have nearly 15 thousand security guards, they are very aware of the gun to be able to make this purchase. The market is there, it is clear.
At Inpec we have an offer to make some pistols and we are analyzing it. We want to close the cycle in everything related to the process and we are already setting all the production lines according to our needs, which cannot be so small or so large. We want to scale to be able to meet the expectations we are generating.
