On 3 December, more than 100 countries, including the UK, will sign a treaty banning cluster bombs. <\/p>\n
As a result Britain, by law, will have to destroy more than 30 million explosives. <\/p>\n
The UK does not have the facilities, so they are being exported to Germany for disposal. <\/p>\n
"I feel good to work for a good thing in the world and for peace," says Jorg Fiegert, production manager for Nammo Demil. <\/p>\n
It runs a site in Pinnow in Germany which destroys munitions. <\/p>\n
Over the next five years its work will include taking apart bomblets from British cluster munitions. <\/p>\n
"It can punch through armour," Jorg explains as he holds up a British bomblet. <\/p>\n
It is only the size of an egg cup, and came from the MLRS, the Multiple Launch Rocket System. <\/p>\n
Each one has six rockets, and within each rocket are 644 bomblets. They are designed to split open in the air and spread small bomblets over a wide area. <\/p>\n
Cluster bombs have been used in countries including Cambodia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Lebanon, and were used in the conflict in Lebanon in 2006.<\/p>\n
Those who ratify the convention in December will then have eight years to get rid of their stockpiles of the weapons. <\/p>\n
The UK government had already begun getting rid of its stocks by shipping them to Germany and elsewhere. <\/p>\n
Nammo has a contract with the UK Ministry of Defence to destroy 28 million of these bomblets, and there are another 3.5 million in other systems to be disposed of. <\/p>\n
"In principle everything except the explosive can be recycled," explains Ola Pikner, Nammo’s vice president of marketing. <\/p>\n
Whole weapons enter the factory, but raw materials for civilian use leave it. <\/p>\n
He shows me how the MLRS rocket is split open. <\/p>\n
The bomblets are extracted, the fuses are cut off and the copper inners are removed. <\/p>\n
The explosive is then burnt off using red hot plasma. <\/p>\n
The copper, aluminium and other metals are sold for scrap. The packaging for the bomblets is burnt for heating. <\/p>\n
This will take up to 40% of their work for the next five years. <\/p>\n
"There is huge potential", says Ola Pikner, "but the number of cluster munitions from each country is not known." <\/p>\n
Campaigners believe there may be as many as a billion of them across Europe. <\/p>\n
But the world’s biggest users – Israel and the USA – will not sign this treaty. <\/p>\n
Nor, it’s thought, will China, Russia, India and Pakistan. <\/p>\n
But Thomas Nash from the Cluster Munition Coalition remains undaunted by this. <\/p>\n
"What you are going to see is a comprehensive stigmatisation of the weapon," he says. <\/p>\n
"Countries that don’t sign up won’t be able to use this weapon on operations with those that do. <\/p>\n