Did Browning close Winchester down and what are the details of the New Haven plant closing?

Answer 1

Winchester hasn't been Winchester in a long time. US Repeating Arms Company has been producing the models under license from the Olin Corporation since 1981. USRAC and Browning are now owned by the same parent corporation in Belgium.

On January 17, 2006, USRAC issued a press release that their facility in New Haven CT would be closing effective 3/31/06. That factory produced the Model 94, Model 70 and Model 1300 and USRAC further announced that production of those models would not be moved anywhere else. That effectively means that no new Model 94's, Model 70's or Model 1300's are being produced... unless somebody else buys the plant and the rights to the designs. The City of New Haven and other interested groups are trying hard to find a buyer and they probably WILL, however there is no guarantee that manufacture is going to stay in New Haven. There is also no guarantee that any further production of these models will bear the Winchester name, since that name was licensed to USRAC from Olin through 2007.

USRAC is still producing several higher-end models that look suspiciously like certain Browning models and are themselves in fact made in either Europe or Japan.