The Pentagon last week announced that Olin-Winchester was selected as the winner of a significant contract for small arms ammunition.
The U.S. Army Contracting Command at Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, awarded the company a $37,141,981 firm-fixed-price contract for 5.56mm, 7.62mm, and .50 caliber ammunition. Work will be performed at Winchester's plant in Oxford, Mississippi, with a completion date stretching to March 2026.
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.
Finally, Olin won a 10-year contract in 2019 to run the Army's historic Lake City ammo plant.