ATF places $10 million more in supply orders with Anchorage's Bering Global Solutions

The federal government picked the company that outfits ATF's Special Operations Division on the basis of a price: $138,572.

Orders under that contract this fiscal year come to $15.7 million.

The gap is not an overrun. The solicitation asked bidders to price one of each item, once per year, purely so the government could compare offers. Actual purchasing happens later, order by order, as the agency needs things. Two orders placed this month went to Bering Global Solutions for $8,742,865 and $1,284,668, both running through August 2027.

The work is equipping agents: clothing, body armor, firearms accessories, and medical and safety gear, run through a distribution and supply center.

Bering Global Solutions is an Anchorage company and a subsidiary of Bering Straits Native Corporation. It holds 72 federal orders across all its work, worth $116.6 million. The ATF contract runs from September 2023 to August 2028.

The award drew a protest. Aurora Industries of Virginia Beach, the incumbent, challenged it, and the Government Accountability Office denied the protest in November 2023.

Aurora lost in part over the pricing chart. The GAO found it had added cells the solicitation expressly prohibited and left out the required totals for the base and option years, defects too material to fix through clarification. The same decision found Aurora rated unsatisfactory on technical and managerial approach and on its transition plan, so it would not have been in line to win regardless.

Aurora's own account of the dispute appears in the record only as the GAO described it.