An Anchorage company will run the ATF's supply operation

The federal agency that regulates guns and explosives keeps a warehouse. Somebody has to stock it, track what is in it and ship equipment out to the people who need it, and for the next two years that somebody is a company headquartered on C Street in Anchorage.

Bering Global Solutions, a subsidiary of Bering Straits Native Corporation, won a $5.31 million contract to operate the supply and distribution center for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, running from this month through August 2028.

This one is unusual in a small way. Most of the company's ATF work has been performed in Anchorage. Of 52 orders placed under the larger contract this falls beneath, 50 list Anchorage as the place of performance, including an $8.74 million order placed a week earlier. This job is in Brunswick, Georgia.

The larger contract dates to August 2023, when ATF set a ceiling near $34.7 million and reserved the competition for disadvantaged small businesses. Five firms bid. About $28.3 million has been committed against that ceiling since, roughly 81 percent. The incumbent that lost, Aurora Industries, protested and was denied, as Alaska News reported.

One date sits oddly against the others. Bering Global Solutions has held its federal small-business disadvantaged certification since October 2017, and it expires Oct. 17, 2026, about six weeks into this contract. The award record does not address what that means for the work.