A&S Tribal Industries (Poplar) plant nears $20 million military fabrication contract

A growing manufacturing company on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation is close to landing a three-year military contract that could bring at least $20 million and 200 jobs to northeast Montana, the tribally owned company’s chief executive officer said Thursday.

By JENNIFER PEREZ
Tribune Hi-Line Bureau

Earlier this month A&S Tribal Industries signed a preliminary contract with Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, the world’s second-largest Defense contractor, said CEO Leonard Smith Jr. from company headquarters in Poplar.

The tribally owned company, which meets National Aeronautics and Space Administration standards, will turn sheets of aluminum and metal into parts for military airplanes and fighter jets, Smith said.

An official signing ceremony will be held in Poplar in early September after the contract goes to the Department of Defense for final approval, Smith said.

"We’re out there competing with the big boys," Smith said. "It’s really important that we have to be successful to show other tribes that this can be done."

Fort Peck tribal industries are on the rebound after 1999 when it faced a $2 million deficit and fell from 500 employees in the 1980s to less than five employees four years ago, Smith said.

As a tribal industry with profits going back to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, Smith began restructuring shortly after he came on board as CEO in late 1998 to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

The company was established in 1975 under the Industrial Mobilization Act to expand rural job opportunities and was successful with defense contracts in its early days, Smith said.

A decline in agricultural growth and gas and oil exploration in the 1980s began chipping away at the rural northeast Montana employment base, and by the early ’90s, the Department of Defense began to downsize and ax contracts.

A&S now employs 70 full-time workers and hopes to put at least 200 more to work as welders, fabricators, machinists, managers and technical programmers by 2006, Smith said.

The company is working with the Fort Peck Community College to set up training programs to prepare tribal members for the work, he said.

Jobs currently range from $6.50 per hour for laborers and $30 an hour for managers, he said.

By the end of this year, Smith expects the company to have earned $5 million to $6 million in Defense contracts for medical chests and other materials and $1 million in commercial contracts.

A prototype mentor program with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration helps Indian-owned businesses bid for government and commercial contracts.

Two-year talks with the Baltimore-based Northrop Grumman intensified this year and in early July the two signed a three-year plan for the project, Smith said.

The company cuts costs with tax exemptions and by using its own equipment, industries and land, Smith said, adding that their labor costs also are lower.

"It’s completely up to us how fast we can grow or how fast we can meet their requirements," Smith said.

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