The Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos (a.k.a. CBC)
** This article was originally posted on the Nylon Rifles Yahoo group and has been reposted here on the site.**
A brief history of the Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos (CBC)
[Note: Most of the material presented below was obtained from the CBC website, www.cbc.com.br. Some of the info was obtained elsewhere. We will add more info as it becomes available and will advise of additions in the Forum. If anyone has more info and/or finds errors in the text, please let us know. Thanks to all. Cheers! Celso.]
In 1926, Italian-born immigrants Costabile and Gianicola Matarazzo decided to begin manufacture of their own shot shells and metallic cartridges instead of using imported ones and – thus – the Fabrica Nacional de Cartuchos e Municoes (F.N.C.M.) was born. Their production of 7x57mm ammunition, then in use by the Brazilian Army, by 1932, reaches 30,000 rounds/day.
In 1936 the company is taken over by the DuPerial group, a joint-venture between USA’s Remington Arms and Britain’s Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and its name is changed to Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos (CBC). The arrival of American-made equipment, in 1938, enables CBC to increase its daily output of 7x57mm cartridges from 30,000 to 100,000. With the beginning of World War II in 1939, all of its output is directed to the Brazilian military.
Production of .22 Long Rifle ammunition begins in 1953 with a yearly output of 2.5 million rounds. By 1957 this figure had reached 23 million rounds/year.
Year 1960 saw the beginning of firearms production, with technology supplied by Remington Arms. In 1962 production of the Brazilian version of the Remington Nylon 66 rifle begins. Exports of single-shot break-open shotguns to the USA begin in 1966.
In 1979 CBC was nationalized with 70% of its shares being bought by its directors, Messrs. Libero Cerroti, Leonardo Galassi and Tiberio Stein. The remaining 30% were bought by IMBEL (Industria Brasileira de Material Belico), an Army-owned company (which, today, makes the M.1911-type pistols sold by Springfield Armory).
With DuPont’s Nylon no longer available for manufacture of the Nylon 66 rifle, CBC contacts Rhodia (chemical and pharmaceutical company belonging to the Rhone-Poulenc group) for a replacement material and Rhodia develops a virtually similar polymer specially for CBC.
Export of ‘civilian’ ammunition to the USA begins in 1983.
Control of the company changes hands once more in 1989, with the 70% belonging to its former directors being taken over by the ARBI group (which belongs to local entrepreneur Andre Birmann). IMBEL still holds its 30% stake in CBC.
1990 sees the creation of the Magtech brand for the CBC export products and 1992 brings the end of the production of the CBC Nylon 66 rifle, after 201,210 units were made. 6 years go by until CBC launches another semi-automatic rifle, the M. 7022 which, in year 2000, gets an optional polymer stock made of thesame material used in the Nylon 66.
Note: The following are copies of some posts by Celso who live in Brazil and has some insight into the CBC nylon clones.
According to some sources, the importer “Kassnar” imported the clones first followed by Magtech which called their import the MT66. I’ve personally never seen a brazilian 66 clone that was not imported by F.I.E.
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Incidentally, one of the results of this cultural diversity is the gun industry in Brasil.
One of the cases is a company which we – in this group – know:
CBC started out in 1926 as an ammunition factory owned by an Italian family (the Matarazzo’s). Later on, this company ended up under government control and the joint-venture with the DuPerial Group came into being. The best (in my humble opinion) fruit of this enterprise was the CBC-Nylon 66 we know and love.
Very few things last forever and when CBC was taken over by a Brazilian group (although the Brazilian government still co-owns it), the CBC-Nylon 66 no longer had its stock made of the DuPont nylon, but of a similar product developed locally by Rhodia (company belonging to the Rhone-Poulenc Group) specially for this purpose.
Nowadays, CBC has a clip-fed semi-auto rifle (the 7022) which recently had a “Nylon” stock version added to the lineup. Unfortunately, this new gun doesn’t come even close to the ‘good old’ Nylon 66…
C’est la vie…
Best regards.
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Are there (or were there) any other ‘clones’ other than the CBC-built ones?
The Brazillian company C.B.C. bought the tooling.
This is not entirely correct. CBC started building their version of the Nylon 66 in 1962, while the company was partly-owned by the DuPerial Group (joint-venture between DuPont and Imperial Chemical Industries). After their share was bought by a Brazilian group, the stock material (DuPont’s Zytel) was replaced by a similar product developed for CBC by Rhodia (Rhone-Poulenc Group).
Production of the CBC Nylon 66 was halted in the early ’90s, after the dies for making the stock/receiver wore out.
Kassnar got the import rights, A Kassnar Nylon 66 came out of that. I didn’t know Kassnar imported CBC’s Nylon 66.
CBC marketed their own rifle as the MT-66 and renamed as the GR-8 later on.
This was – I suppose – while FIE imported the CBC guns. I believe MRP sold the CBC Nylon 66 under its own brand for a brief period, before production ceased.
Best regards.
Celso.
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Editors Note: We learned in Feb 06 that Century Arms Intl. also imported the CBC clone. It was called the Nylon 66. There is picture of it’s markings in the Photo Gallery.
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