Бум авиакосмической отрасли: производители Connecticut расширяют мощности в три раза

The next time you settle into an airplane seat, there’s a chance it’s fixed to the aircraft with a fastener made in Burlington. Crescent Manufacturing is in the midst of tripling its factory footprint to meet soaring demand for its products, the biggest expansion in its more than 60-year history. In 2021, the company generated about $5.5 million in annual sales. Last year, sales reached $15.6 million, and Crescent now has a $24 million order backlog, with lead times for some products stretching beyond a year. The trajectory of the small Connecticut manufacturer reflects an unusually broad aerospace boom that has been building since the industry emerged from the COVID-19 downturn. Commercial and military aerospace demand are surging at the same time — an unusual convergence in two markets that have often followed different cycles — straining suppliers while creating new opportunities for growth and investment in Connecticut. Aerospace companies are accustomed to boom-and-bust cycles, but industry veterans say there are signs this one is different. “If you look at the aerospace industry, the demand has just taken off everywhere. We’re just kind of trying to hold on,” said Crescent’s Vice President of Sales Dan Bielefield. “We need more room, we need more equipment, we need more people, we need more parts produced every week,” he said. Easing congestion Crescent currently produces between 3.5 million and 5 million parts a week and is trying to boost output to as many as 7.5 million to keep pace with demand. Seat fasteners are a relatively new product line for Crescent, which makes a wide range of precision screws and metal fasteners used in the interiors of aircraft made by Boeing and Airbus. The company also supplies parts for military applications, including drones and missiles. About 20% of Crescent’s sales are overseas. The company’s 20,000-square-foot expansion represents an investment of more than $3 million and will bring its Burlington footprint to 30,000 square feet. Crescent owner Steve Wilson, who bought the business in 2005, said the additional space is long overdue. Huge wire coils, the company’s primary raw material, currently have to be stored off-site because there isn’t enough room at the Burlington factory. “You can barely walk through, it’s so congested,” he said. “We have to shut machines down and move things around to put wire coils in place.” Finding enough workers presents another challenge. Chief Financial Officer Aron Stevenson said the 50-employee company is continually hiring, but Connecticut’s tight manufacturing labor market means much of the additional output will have to come from increasing productivity through lean manufacturing techniques. “We’re always looking for process improvement,” Stevenson said. “Changing the way we move parts through the factory, all sorts of stuff just to try to eliminate handling, eliminate queue times as much as possible and allow parts to flow as efficiently and quickly as possible from the machine out the door.” Ramping up Crescent’s growth is part of a much broader surge in aerospace manufacturing, with major companies such as Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky ramping up production and pushing increased demand through hundreds of Connecticut suppliers. Pratt & Whitney recently said it has received more than 800 orders for its geared turbofan engine since the beginning of 2026. The engine is being supplied to more than 90 airlines worldwide. On the military side, the East Hartford-based engine maker was recently awarded a $1.3 billion contract to produce spare parts for the F135 engine that powers the F-35 Lightning II. At Sikorsky, the Stratford-based helicopter maker is fulfilling a $10.85 billion, five-year U.S. Navy contract to build up to 99 CH-53K heavy-lift helicopters for the U.S. Marine Corps. Stamford-based Hexcel Corp., which makes advanced composite materials used in commercial and military aircraft, recently said it is adding workers and restarting previously idle manufacturing assets as aircraft production increases. Hexcel’s commercial aerospace sales rose 18.3% in the second quarter, driven by higher aircraft production including the Airbus A350 and A320neo and Boeing 787 and 737 MAX. The growth is also showing up in Connecticut’s trade data. Connecticut exported $430 million in aircraft parts in June, up 21.4% from the same month a year earlier, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, an international trade data platform. The Observatory reported that aircraft parts were Connecticut’s largest export in 2025, totaling $5 billion and accounting for about 28% of the state’s $17.7 billion in total exports. The surge extends well beyond Connecticut. The U.S. aerospace and defense industry surpassed $1 trillion in annual revenue for the first time in 2025, according to accounting and consulting firm PwC. U.S. aerospace and defense exports reached $172.7 billion last year, up 25% from 2024, according to the Aerospace Industries Association. The industry also generated about $500 billion in economic value in 2025, representing 1.6% of U.S. gross domestic product, the association said. Longtime aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, said it will take time for the industry’s manufacturing capacity to catch up. “It’ll take years to get supply in line with demand,” Aboulafia said. What makes the current cycle particularly unusual, he said, is that surging military demand is hitting the aerospace supply chain while commercial aircraft manufacturers are trying to dramatically increase production. “Defense worldwide has been on a massive tear and that’s pressuring everybody,” he said. That includes efforts to replenish munitions depleted by global conflicts, including those in Iran and Ukraine, while many countries are also increasing defense spending and expanding their military capabilities. At the same time, commercial air travel has reached record levels, while airlines are modernizing their fleets with newer, more fuel-efficient aircraft, contributing to historically large order backlogs. “The binding constraints remain supply chain performance and workforce capacity, and closing that gap is the industry’s most urgent operational challenge,” PwC said in a recent industry analysis. Aerospace manufacturers are also facing competition for capacity from other growing markets. Investment in space exploration is expanding, while aerospace companies are developing more sophisticated drones, electric propulsion systems and vertical-lift aircraft. That development work competes for engineering talent, manufacturing capacity and components that could otherwise support commercial aircraft production. Meanwhile, Aboulafia said the rapid construction of data centers is increasing demand for power-generation equipment that relies on some of the same technologies and suppliers used by aerospace manufacturers. ‘Gone crazy’ That’s something Michael Polo, president and founder of Manchester-based ACMT, which manufactures components and assemblies for aerospace and industrial gas-turbine engines, is seeing firsthand. “Our industrial engine business has gone crazy — that’s all the data centers and all the power generation,” Polo said. “I have never seen more movement in those. That itself has been another unprecedented opportunity for us.” Over its 40-year history, ACMT, formerly Ad-Chem, has developed a range of manufacturing capabilities, including producing components for Pratt & Whitney’s geared turbofan engine and performing maintenance and repair work on gas-turbine components. The company recently leased a third building in Manchester, where it has built a new clean room and create additional manufacturing space. The expansion will allow ACMT to better separate its sheet-metal fabrication, composites and repair operations and work involving fan blade covers for Pratt & Whitney. Polo said Pratt & Whitney is also transitioning some work on legacy engines to ACMT, freeing capacity at the engine maker’s facilities for development and other work. “This cycle that we’re going through now, I’ve never seen before,” he said. “I started the company 40 years ago. And our 40th year has by far been our best year ever.” Stevenson, Crescent’s CFO, has a similarly long perspective on the industry’s ups and downs. “This to me feels different than anything I’ve experienced,” he said. “Just given the scale, the scope of the work we’re seeing, the work we don’t have that we think we can get, and the demand that is out there.”