🔒Despite pandemic pressures, Connecticut Spring & Stamping’s expansion efforts move forward

To say that COVID-19 has left any industry or company immune from its impact would be an understatement.

But the pandemic hasn’t blocked the growth streak of Farmington-based metal manufacturer Connecticut Spring & Stamping (CSS).

“Business is excellent,” said CSS President Steve Dicke in an interview.

As the global economy rebounds and the threat of COVID recedes, CSS is experiencing robust growth. New projects run the gamut from expanding its production facilities, purchasing new equipment and making new hires, Dicke said.

The 80-year-old, family-owned business makes precision metal parts and components for a wide range of industries including medical, aerospace, defense, transportation, consumer products and firearms.

Its gadgets can be found in products ranging from EpiPens, aircraft landing gear and printer cartridges to door latches, auto engines and brand name firearms, as well as hundreds more.

Orders have been robust from every sector except aerospace, said Dicke, with the latter expected to rebound by early 2023.

During the pandemic, CSS has been regarded as a critical supplier to the U.S. government and overall economy. The company’s 470 employees, mostly based in Connecticut, were deemed essential workers by the state and remained on the front line, required to show up on-site.

“We can’t manufacture remotely, we have to be here,” Dicke said.

The company had been considering expansion for years but moved forward with it in 2020, despite ongoing questions about how the pandemic would evolve.

In March CSS expects to break ground on a new 48,000-square-foot addition to its 48 Spring Lane headquarters, which it has occupied since 1962. The new addition will house a state-of-the-art stamping facility and upgrade the company’s production capacities while meeting key quality, safety and innovation needs, Dicke said.

Currently the 150,000-square-foot headquarters facility accommodates both administrative offices and manufacturing operations, where a variety of stamping presses and other machinery are used to make both high-volume and high-precision parts. Despite physical upgrades to the building over the past 60 years, the current production space is no longer sufficient to accommodate newly purchased high-speed presses that will provide CSS more efficiency and a competitive edge, Dicke said.

Some of the machinery — significantly bigger, heavier and taller — demands both more vertical and horizontal space, in part to meet operating safety regulations set out by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The company has retained Newtown-based Claris Construction and Zuvic Engineering in Rocky Hill to consult on the new addition’s design, engineering and environment considerations.

On the drawing board are improvements that also complement the existing production facility’s design, which includes high ceilings encircled by a two-foot-wide band of windows. In the new addition, the ceiling band of windows will be twice as high.

“It will give us even more daylight, which adds to the quality of our working environment,” Dicke said.

The expansion plan was approved by the Farmington Planning and Zoning Commission during an Oct. 25, virtual meeting.

Challenging environment

CSS is also expanding production capacities at its two other Connecticut locations. One is just two doors down, at 28 Spring Lane, a 50,000-square-foot facility it purchased in 2013. The manufacturing space is currently the center of the company’s fourslide metalworking operations, which uses machinery for high output production of intricate stampings, wire forms and CNC-fixtured machining of stamped parts.

Last year the company purchased a 32,000-square-foot building in Southington, currently used for expanded productions of spring manufacturing for the medical markets and some warehousing of raw materials and customer inventory. CSS will continue to expand production there and be at capacity by June 2022, Dicke said.

He declined to disclose the privately-held company’s annual revenues, but said CSS has “been investing millions and millions of dollars into new equipment as we take older pieces off line and replace them with new state-of-the-art machinery.”

CSS hasn’t been spared the ongoing consequences of the COVID pandemic, including grappling with the impact of global supply chain disruptions and price pressures.

Sourcing raw materials like stainless steel necessary to produce its components remains a continual challenge both from U.S. and global suppliers, Dicke said.

Lead times from order to delivery have gone from 12 weeks to 40 weeks in some cases. New equipment orders for its own production operations have been delayed because machinery manufacturers are also having trouble sourcing parts to complete their products. And construction of the new addition, which is expected to take a year, has had to adapt to spikes in building material costs and unforeseen delays in delivery.

The pandemic has also worsened the shortage of skilled labor, which makes finding new hires difficult. The company has also had to spend more money to keep current employees safe and healthy, Dicke said.

A 2021 survey by the Manufacturing Institute’s Center for Manufacturing Research of small and mid-sized companies in the sector found a vast majority were grappling with similar struggles with supply chain, production process and labor issues, as a result of COVID.

The same holds true for manufacturers throughout Connecticut, said Jamison Scott, executive director of ManufactureCT, an industry group.

“Many companies are doing well and looking to grow but face global and national challenges,” Scott said.

The state had nearly 8,000 job openings in manufacturing pre-pandemic and that’s only worsened, he adds.