Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) Force Behind The Forces

Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) is Pakistan’s premier arms and ammunition manufacturing facility, which not only serves the defence requirements of the country’s Armed Forces, but also caters to the needs of export markets. Established in the early 1950’s, POF now stands as an advanced defence industrial complex, producing approximately 70 major products including automatic rifles, medium and heavy machine guns, a wide range of mortars and artillery ammunition, aircraft and anti-aircraft ammunition, tank and anti-tank ammunition, bombs, grenades and pyrotechnics. POF also has a state-of-the-art stitching unit for bulk production of uniforms and military fabric components like Personal Load Carrying Equipment. 

For about last sixty five (65) years now, POF has been meeting almost 90% requirements of the Pakistan Armed Forces. Presently, with the help of international partners, POF is improving with induction of better technologies in existing inventory for enhanced range, improved lethality and better accuracy. Concurrently POF is working towards including few new products in collaboration with partners. POF has also embarked upon a fairly comprehensive exercise of Balancing, Modernization, Replacement and Expansion (BMRE) to up-grade vintage machinery. It is a continuous process and the purpose is not only to increase the output but to improve the quality of artillery munitions as well. Besides meeting the requirements of our own Armed Forces, POF is also utilizing some of the capacity to export as well. 

In addition to catering to the requirements of Pakistan Armed Forces and domestic commercial market, defense and commercial divisions of POF are implementing a multi-faceted international marketing strategy and exporting the products across the globe. POF’s relentless pursuit of excellence through reliance on high quality, precision manufacturing and on-time delivery, has boosted international demand for our products and further widened the customer base. We do not restrict ourselves to any particular region but we have the clientele spread over 40 countries in all the continents. 

This is a major challenge for POF, like most of the defense manufacturers. However POF with large reservoir of technical work force and extensive manufacturing facilities with integral R&D is continuously upgrading existing product range. POF’s engineers are working on number of projects, which include the assault rifle for the future, modifications to existing weapons to meet urban warfare requirements, a squad combat system for effective clearance of built up areas, enhanced performance of sporting / hunting ammunition, and development of useful combat equipment and accessories. Cases in point are G3M Rifle and SMG PK 7.62x51mm which is modified version of G3A3 with additional features and improvements and other products like Designated Marksmen Rifle (DMR) etc. has diversified and enhanced our customer base. In addition, POF is undertaking extensive restructuring, whereby dual-use production setups are being commercialized with public-private partnership, which provides revenue for other units of POF. POF is also leveraging its unique advantages to formulate and implement mutually beneficial cooperation agreements and joint ventures with some of the leading defense manufacturers, thus increasing exports and compensating for the shrinking defense budgets. 

POF being a public sector organization has certain inherent procedural constraints but gradually and systematically is moving towards public private partnership. This experience has started paying dividends and will certainly contribute towards improvement of our quality and output both. Besides, it has made POF more competitive in international market with affordability quality being distinctive among the reliable exporters of Arms & Ammunition worldwide. POF has a threefold quality control mechanism which includes exhaustive procedures for qualification of product at factory level prior to inspection by Quality Assurance Department which works directly under Chairman POF Board and finally the Pre-Shipment Inspection in accordance with agreed Acceptance Test Procedures with the buyers. In this way POF has significantly strengthened its position in the global market as an exporter of quality product with competitive prices. 

Being state owned entity and sole producer of conventional arms and ammunitions in Pakistan, POF is an attractive place for foreign companies for collaboration, and there are some extremely successful ventures in the past (case in point being Wah Nobel Group of companies engaged in production of commercial explosives and chemicals) and few other projects are also under various stages of finalization/execution. 

POF, while remaining in the public sector will transform more towards a corporate style company, which will be better aware and alive to the global needs and trends. Technology inflow, restructuring capacity building and upgrading of plants and machinery, with the aim of bridging the technology gap and enabling POF to produce state-of-the-art arms and ammunition compatible with international standards will be its distinctive feature. Balancing, Modernization, Replacement and Expansion program of POF aims at enhancing potential/quality and involves various initiatives and sub projects spreading from short term to long term measures. Towards this end, POF has collaborated with the private sector at national and international level and efforts are in hand to work towards new and better products. In two to three years time, POF is seen as an increasingly self-reliant, more vibrant and progressive industry producing much smarter range of conventional arms and ammunition. 

POF is a perfect meeting point of Technology and Experience where decades long experience is strength in provision of high quality products to domestic and international customers. Today as the global defence industry becomes more and more competitive, POF is also modernizing its products by employing skilled workforce and latest technology. The current management of POF is not only aware of the changing global trends but it is also taking practical steps to ensure the organization remains up to date with the same. In this respect, POF is following a policy of self-reliance in order to embrace the modern trends of the 21st century to continue production of quality arms and ammunitions on a permanent basis.