Seymour firm joins wind project

Power cable maker Marmon Utility is looking toward its future, and executives say that’s in Connecticut’s emerging offshore wind industry.

“This is a very big deal for us,” said President Angelo Santamaria on Monday during a news conference announcing that the Seymourbased company would be partnering with Vineyard Wind on its proposed Park City Wind project slated for Bridgeport.

The project is one of three bids being reviewed by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and still has to be voted on, but officials from both companies touted the potential economic benefits that the project could provide to Marmon Utility.

“This could be transformational for our company it’s not just about delivering cables for the Park City project, but we are looking to really be a local player in the offshore wind market, and Park City (Wind) will enable us to do that,” Santamaria said.

The agreement is contingent on Vineyard Wind’s proposal being chosen and calls for Marmon Utility to invest up to $4 million to increase staff and upgrade its Kerite power cable facility at 49 Day St. In turn, Vineyard Wind is promising to use the Kerite cable brand as its preferred cable supplier for at least 50 percent of the project, according to a news release.

Offshore wind would be new territory for the manufacturers, but Santamaria said it wouldn’t be completely foreign.

Marmon Utility’s legacy of supplying power cables spans back more than a century. The company was started in 1854 by Austin Goodyear Day — Charles Goodyear’s nephew — to build insulated telegraph cables.

Known as Kerite Company at the time, the Seymour business installed the world’s first submarine cable under the Hudson River in the 1880s and supplied power and signal cable for the Panama Canal in the early 1900s.

Kerite was acquired by Marmon Group, a Berkshire Hathaway company, in 1999 from Hubbell.

“We’ve come a long way from then,” Santamaria said

The partnership between the Marmon and Vineyard Wind started six months ago, according to Lars Pedersen, CEO of Vineyard Wind.

The company, an affiliate of Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, wants to turn Bridgeport into the hub for its project, which would use harbor front land as a staging dock for its wind farm that would be built south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

The company’s proposal offers options up to 1,200 megawatts of power — equal to powering 600,000 homes in the state — in response to a standing order for 2,000 megawatts the state issued this year.

Marmon Utilities would supply the cables that connect to each of Vineyard Wind’s turbines into strings that eventually connect to an electrical service platform that would supply power to the state.

“It’s really exciting to be here with a new exciting industry here in the U.S. and then right around the corner you find a company that has been operating since 1854 having all the capabilities that we need,” Pedersen said.

The supply contract is expected to bring $40 million in direct expenditures to the state, while the Seymour facility expansion would create an estimated 35 permanent jobs in town, according to Santamaria.

Over the next decade, Vineyard Wind predicted that the expanded facility could create up to 350 fulltime jobs and almost $400 million in direct revenue in Connecticut. It would also make Kerite the first “American Tier 1 Supplier” in offshore wind, according to Pedersen.

That has traditionally been reserved for Asia and Europe’s industry, he said.

While Vineyard Wind’s proposal could be a stepping stone for Marmon into offshore wind, the decision still rests with DEEP, which won’t make its decision until November.

If they aren’t picked, Santamaria said Marmon Utility will still look to find its way into the industry.

“We’ll continue to look for opportunities,” he said. “We think Connecticut is a perfect place to participate and make cables for this industry… so while it would be a setback we’d look to see what our options are.”