Manufacturing

Connecticut's manufacturing sector runs on a spine of large primes — Pratt & Whitney, Electric Boat, Sikorsky, Kaman, Stanley Black & Decker — surrounded by hundreds of precision-component suppliers, machine shops, and advanced-materials companies. The firm represents the second group. Our manufacturing docket is built from middle-market family-owned businesses that supply the primes, tooling companies that serve the aerospace and defense base, and specialty-materials firms that grew out of the mid-century Connecticut chemical and polymer industry.

Environmental compliance is a recurring workload. Legacy industrial sites in Connecticut carry historical contamination, and the Transfer Act (recently reformed but still operative for pre-2024 transactions) shapes nearly every industrial real-estate transaction. We handle DEEP-LEP engagements, release notifications under RCSA § 22a-450, and brownfields redevelopment grants through DECD. Archie Donovan, formerly enforcement counsel at DEEP, advises manufacturing clients on enforcement posture and regulatory-strategy matters.

Supply-chain contracts and customer programs are the transactional core. Long-term-agreement negotiations with aerospace primes, tooling-purchase agreements, and Defense Priorities and Allocations System (DPAS) rated-order compliance all run through the Corporate group. Export controls are a lighter-touch practice — ITAR and EAR classification questions, export-license support on specific transactions, and commodity-jurisdiction determinations — but come up often enough that the firm maintains working familiarity with BIS and DDTC practice.

Labor and employment is the third major area. Norman Cavanaugh represents manufacturing employers through union campaigns, collective-bargaining negotiations, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspections. Connecticut's manufacturing labor force includes legacy union relationships with the Machinists (IAM) and the USW; knowing the local representatives matters, and the practice has done so for decades.

Transactional M&A is led by equity partner Giovanni Marchetti, whose private-equity experience aligns well with the succession-driven sales that dominate middle-market manufacturing in Connecticut. Real Estate associate Brock Harrison, a UConn geologist by background, handles environmental due diligence on industrial-site acquisitions and natural-resources permitting for the firm's quarry and aggregates clients. Managing Partner Steven Stone remains engaged on the advanced-materials and energy-adjacent deals, a carryover from his in-house years at a Hartford industrial holding company.