In just three short years, an Italian maker of jet-engine compressor blades with a colorful name has revived a formerly moribund Farmington industrial shop into a local and state economic-development showcase. Pietro Rosa Turbine Blade Manufacturing purchased and expanded, with the help of $5 million in state loans, the remnants of Farmington’s New England Airfoil Products (NEAP), a once thriving maker of compressor blades whose business model had regressed.

Pietro Rosa has already hired more than 100 employees in Farmington, which could make it eligible for state loan forgiveness, the state says. Following introduction of Pietro Rosa’s leadership to Connecticut’s then governor and his top economic-development lieutenant at the 2016 Paris Air Show — just as the Italians had all but settled on expanding in South Carolina — Pietro Rosa quickly pivoted.