Republican candidate for Governor, Walt Havenstein, toured the factory floor of an aluminum casting company Wednesday. The visit marks the start of a series of similar tours as part of his Republican primary campaign.
Walt Havenstein has spent his career working with defense contractors, most notably as President of BAE Systems. That’s an experience he seems to make central to his campaign.
Uni-Cast in Londonderry makes unique aluminum parts for commercial and military aero-space contracts.
Havenstein says he admires how successfully the company adapted to the loss of domestic defense contracts.
“It’s a business that’s transitioned from one industry to another and the parts they provided, frankly, and the parts they provided were parts they provided to me at BAE systems. So coming here and thanking these folks for the work they did for us was really my primary mission.”
Executives in the company told Havenstein that their main concerns were high energy and medical costs and uncertainty in the market.
Havenstein is running against Andrew Hemingway in the Republican primary.