Since bombs began falling on Baghdad more than two years ago, Capco Inc., a little-known Grand Junction-based defense contractor, has increased its payroll by more than a third.
Capco, which makes machine-gun mounts, bomb fins, cartridges used to launch chaff from planes to confuse enemy radar, and other defense products, has added 55 employees to keep up with steady demand from the Pentagon. With about 200 employees, the company accounted for about $35 million worth of defense spending last year, said Peter Rowland, a spokesman for the Army contracting office in Picatinny, N.J.
The company’s development of the M-192 gun mount – which will replace a mount that has been used by ground troops since the 1930s – led to much of the recent hiring, said Stephen Wood, Capco president. Capco received a contract from the Army to develop the M-192, a tripod that braces a machine gun used by U.S. and NATO forces.
At roughly 11 pounds, the new mount is almost 7 pounds lighter than its predecessor. “You pack it around and poke it in the dirt and mount your gun on it,” Wood said.
So far, Capco has received two multiyear contracts totaling about $23 million for at least 15,800 of the mounts, Wood said.
None of the tripods is expected to travel to the Middle East upon delivery, Rowland said. “These will equip troops in the U.S. … and train them so they will have the new item and be versed in its use.”
Capco’s development of the mount would have resulted in increased hiring, war or not, Wood said.
The military conflict probably accelerated growth. “This would all be happening anyway, but the urgency for delivery now is probably a little higher,” he said.
The military needs ordnance to replace the bombs and other equipment burned up in steady conflict that began with the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, said Bradley Curran, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan.
“That ordnance has been depleted and is going to have to be replenished. There should be a lot of work not just to replace ordnance, but guns and gun mounts get worn out and need to be replaced as well,” Curran said.
Capco would account for a tiny sliver of the more than $400 billion that Congress has approved for the Defense Department in the upcoming fiscal year.
But in Grand Junction, where the average company employs fewer than 50 people, Capco is an important piece of the economy, said Bob Reece, chairman of the Grand Junction Economic Partnership. “These are good-paying jobs,” Reece said.
Defense-related job increases are mirrored elsewhere in the state, as well. In the Colorado Springs area, home to the state’s largest concentration of defense and homeland-security businesses, contractors have lifted their total employment rolls by about 5,000 over the past four years, bringing the total to 11,475, said Mike Kazmierski, chief executive of the Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp.
The growth has drawn little attention, Kazmierski said. “We have a business-retention program that goes out and talks to companies, and we find that over time they are growing, but there are no announcements.”
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
