Olin-Winchester was selected by the U.S. Army Contracting Command to make 5.56mm, 7.62mm, and .50 caliber ammunition for then Army.
The contract for the ammunition is fixed price and is valued at a whopping $37,141,981, the fixed price aspect of the contract means that even if this ammunition were to go up in value Winchester could not charge the Army more for the ammunition.
From Guns.com:
The 200,000-square-foot facility in the Magnolia State has steadily expanded its workforce in the past decade, as Olin moved over 1,000 manufacturing jobs there from the company’s traditional Illinois location.
Olin dates to 1892, when it was originally formed as a small blasting powder supplier, and acquired Winchester’s ammunition concern in 1931. According to company documents, they are the “Number one producer of small arms ammunition globally.”
The company has been very busy when it comes to the military in the past few years.
In 2016, Olin was selected by the Army to supply as many as 100 million rounds of 9mm ammunition – M1152 Ball, M1153 Special Purpose, and M1156 Drilled Dummy Inert – to the Pentagon as part of Sig Sauer’s new Modular Handgun System. Further, the company and Heckler & Koch are sub-contractors to Textron Systems in a competition to provide the Army’s planned new Next Generation Squad Weapon, chambered for a new 6.8mm cartridge.
While this contract is to supply the military, the civilian ammunition market remains dry. Ammo has been in short supply and consumers are willing to pay top dollar for 9mm and 5.56mm, the pandemic and summer loaded with rioting encouraged a lot of Americans to buy a firearm for the first time and stock up on ammo.
