Local Company To Work With Navy Destroyers

The U.S. Department of Defense announced that Marotta, a Montville-based engineering company, would be part of an eight-million-dollar contract deal with the navy.

According to Tara Castorina, Director of communications for Marotta, the contract is welcome, but not out of the ordinary.

"We do a fairly large portion of our business with the military," she said. "A good amount of our work comes from the navy, working on chilled water systems, torpedo-launching systems."

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the contract calls for outfitting DDG 1000 destroyers with armored compartments to house MK57 vertical launching systems. These compartments serve to protect missiles and launchers from damage while keeping them isolated from equipment and people.

Marotta's primary focus in the contract will be to provide valves for the vertical launching system. According to Castorina, Marotta has experience making valves for the navy and is used to working with high-stakes systems.

"We work on bigger, more difficult system," she said. "The vertical launching system will call for a large inline valve that holds back water and cools the launcher in the event of a misfire. These are not easy things to make."

Located in Montville since 1943, Castorina says that Marotta has a long history of working with the military and with aerospace programs.

"We do a lot of aerospace business," she said. "We have a long heritage and history with the space program. We've been involved since the Gemini and Apollo projects."

Besides government work, Castorina says the company has branched out to private groups as well.

"With government scaling back space exploration and turning satellite launches to commercial business, we've done a lot of work with new, commercial space programs.  We are one of the largest valve suppliers to Space X, the first commercial company to launch a vehicle into space."

Castorina attributes the company's success to the quality of its work.

"When you are working in space or on the water, even the slightes hiccup can cause major problems," she said. "Valve failure can be a multi-million dollar failure in terms of money and time. It would be hard to find a supplier who has the track record we have. There isn't a lot of competition."

Work on the contract will also be preformed in Maine and California, though not through Marotta. The contract was announced on June 22.