A single food contractor grew fiftyfold on wartime Afghanistan contracts with 18-23 percent margins

Evidence

Supreme was founded in 1957 by an Army veteran, Alfred Ornstein, who saw an opportunity to provide food for the hundreds of growing U.S. bases in Germany. After expanding over several decades into the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, the company won multibillion-dollar “sole source contracts” that gave it a virtual monopoly over wartime food services in Afghanistan. In the decade since the start of the war in 2001, the company’s revenues grew more than fiftyfold to $5.5 billion. Its profit margins in 2008–2011 ranged between 18 and 23 percent. Wartime contracts account for 90 percent of revenues for the company, which, like KBR, is now based in Dubai. They have made its majority owner, the founder’s son, Stephen Ornstein, a billionaire. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 701

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘soldiers-to-contractors shift in who peels the potatoes’ framing plus a single company growing 50x on war suggests an essay on how war profiteering concentrates in mundane logistical services rather than weapons.