The U.S. Defense Department has been steadily increasing its purchases of fasteners and hardware. At BidLink, we have studied government buying activity for screws, bolts, studs, nuts, washers, nails & rivets over the past five years and found that hardware is a growth industry. In 2009, the Defense Logistics Agency, the primary procurement arm of the Defense Department purchased $233 Million worth of fasteners.
Although all of the numbers are not in yet, we predict 2010 will be down slightly, closer to $200 million. Even in the face of major cuts to defense spending, purchases for fasteners are still strong. Recent austerity measures at the defense department are slashing major purchases of new systems. This creates a growing need to support existing equipment with replacement parts. As we study various industries, we are seeing a familiar pattern. U.S. companies that make common items like batteries, safety equipment, electric motors, and hardware can make a lot of money selling to the government.
An analysis of the competition in this industry reveals that Herndon Products has won the most contracts with almost 6,000 in 2009. The company supplied 3,310 different types of items to the defense department in that year. The most popular was a National Stock Number 5310-01-097-8010, NUT,PLAIN,ASSEMBLED with 49 delivery orders in 2009. These purchases were made through a long-term contract (see delivery order) , where once they win the bid, the defense department requests regular orders against the contract. The above delivery order for $9,126.02 is #575 against the master contract. These types of contracts can last many years, but when they expire, prudent contractors can win them.
By sales, the winner is Columbia Nut and Bolt, with almost $17 Million in 2009. Their headquarters is in Moonachie, New Jersey. They are a wholesaler of hardware 500-750 employees, which primarily sells to the government. They are followed closely by Herndon Products with nearly $16 Million.
The Defense Logistics Agency buys over 185,000 different kinds of fasteners, screws, nuts, bolts and rivets. The total number of contracts in 2009 jumped 15% over the 2008 tally to 51,150.
BidLink.net is an aggregator of defense industry information for contractors worldwide. This data includes millions of defense contracts, procurement history, part numbers and vendor details. This unique combination of resources allows BidLink to monitor and extract important information for the defense contracting industry. BidLink.net, based in Washington, D.C., provides bid consolidation, searching and notification services, as well as part number (NSN) lookup services to many military activities and thousands of private companies around the world.
(Exculsive article to the American Fastener Journal)
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