The agreement transferring 54.99 acres of Jalil Textile Mills land
The agreement transferring 54.99 acres of Jalil Textile Mills land at Bhatiary, Chattogram, to the Bangladesh Army was signed in Dhaka on 27 August. Handout / ISPR

The Bangladesh Army has obtained land for a second ordnance production site, ending a search that has run for two years.

An agreement transferring 54.99 acres at Bhatiary in Chattogram was signed in Dhaka on Thursday, moving the land from Jalil Textile Mills Ltd — a unit of the state-owned Bangladesh Textile Mills Corporation — to the army for expansion of Bangladesh Ordnance Factories.

Commerce, Industry, Textiles and Jute Minister Khandaker Abdul Muktadir attended as chief guest, with Lieutenant General Mohammad Shaheenul Haque, the army's Quartermaster General, delivering the welcome address. BTMC chairman Brigadier General SM Zahid Hasan signed on behalf of the corporation.

The attendance list indicates the weight attached to the transfer: the BOF commandant, the Commandant of the Bangladesh Military Academy, the General Officer Commanding of 24 Infantry Division, the Defence Ministry secretary, Chattogram's divisional commissioner and the chairman of the Chattogram Development Authority were among those present.

What BOF currently is

Bangladesh Ordnance Factories is the country's only state-owned weapons and ammunition manufacturer, which makes a second site a structural change rather than an incremental one.

Established in 1968 with Chinese technical and financial assistance and formally inaugurated in April 1970, BOF occupies roughly 303 acres at Gazipur Cantonment, north of Dhaka. It produces firearms, artillery, fuses, detonators and explosives, and manufactures the BD-08 assault rifle, the standard-issue weapon of the Bangladesh Army and Border Guard Bangladesh.

Following modernisation work in the 1980s, annual production targets were set at 2,500 rifles and 15 million rounds of ammunition. Capacity has since expanded substantially, with reported small-arms ammunition capacity reaching around 90 million rounds a year. A TNT filling plant, grenade production plant and induction furnace were added in 2005, and the BD-08 plant in 2008.

The location

The army has been seeking land at Bhatiary since 2024. Officials cited the site's geopolitical position, close to the Indian state of Tripura, among the reasons for the choice.

Chattogram also offers what Gazipur does not: proximity to Bangladesh's principal port, and to the Chattogram Dry Dock and other military-operated industrial enterprises. For a manufacturer with any export ambition, port access is a practical consideration rather than a symbolic one.

The land itself comes from a closed textile mill — one of many acquired by BTMC after its creation in 1972 — which places this transfer within a broader pattern of repurposing defunct state industrial assets.

What to watch

Construction timelines have not been announced, and a 55-acre greenfield ordnance site is a multi-year undertaking.

The second is what the site will produce. BOF's published expansion planning has referred to small arms, light weapons, guided and unguided systems, and to promoting regional defence exports in line with national policy — but the specific output of the Chattogram plant has not been confirmed.

The third is foreign investment. Foreign direct investment in defence hardware is not currently permitted in Bangladesh, and officials have indicated discussions with the three services about whether that should change.