Mar 07, 2003
The Miami Herald and The Union Tribune (San Diego, California) both reported on March 6, 2003 that PCB manufacturer Toppan Electronics, Inc. will shutter its plant in San Diego at the end of this month, thus cutting 260 jobs.
Toppan Electronics, a subsidiary of Japan-based Toppan Printing Co. Ltd., makes multilayer PCBs for mobile phones, telecoms equipment, and computer products, said The Union Tribune. The firm has operated from the 108,000-square-foot facility in San Diego since 1988, said both newspapers.
In response to sagging prices and lower demand, Toppan Printing is shifting production to factories in Japan and the Philippines, both papers cited Jerry Barnes, president and chief operating officer of Toppan Electronics, as saying.
In October 2002, Toppan Printing and NEC Corp. created a joint venture company that brought together their global PCB manufacturing operations. Some production from the San Diego site will be shifted to Toppan-NEC plants, The Union Tribune reported. Toppan also owns a (roughly) 100,000-square-foot factory in Poway, California, that was built to double Toppan's PCB capacity with a state-of-the-art facility, said The Union Tribune. However, Toppan never occupied that building, the newspaper reported. Barnes was cited by The Union Tribune as saying that Toppan Printing plans to do some sort of manufacturing in Poway, but no details were given as to what would be manufactured there or when production would begin.
