Canon Considering Tijuana as Well as Costa Mesa for Typewriter Plant

SAN DIEGO —  Some or all of the 600 jobs that Tokyo-based electronics giant Canon Inc. said last month would be moving to Costa Mesa from Japan for electronic typewriter production may end up going to Tijuana.

Costa Mesa-based Canon Business Machines, a manufacturing division of Canon that makes “consumable” Canon office supplies and which recently was given responsibility for typewriter production, confirmed Friday that its parent has acquired an option to purchase seven acres of land in Tijuana that would be used for typewriter manufacturing.

C. Douglas Michie, Canon Business Machines’ executive vice president, said Canon will decide over the next month whether to exercise its option. If it does, the company would complete and occupy a plant of less than 50,000-square feet by the end of this year.

Just how many of the 600 additional employees will be put in Tijuana if the option is exercised has not been decided, Michie said. “I think we’ll distribute them between Costa Mesa and Tijuana,” he said.

Canon, which posted worldwide sales of $7.9 billion in 1987, also said last month that it would make a $24.8-million investment in new plant facilities for the typewriter production. In light of the Tijuana option, it was unclear Friday where and how that investment would be distributed.

Canon Business Machines has had a corporate presence in Costa Mesa since 1974. It now employs 200 at its 125,000-square-foot plant there. The plant makes typewriter ribbon cartridges, toner for various photocopier models and also does resurfacing for photosensitive drums used in copiers.

Although the land optioned by Canon is large enough to accommodate a plant of about 200,000 square feet, Michie said Canon would probably start out with a plant of less than 50,000 square feet and then expand, “depending on the success of the operation.”

Canon is one of a number of Japanese electronics giants to move or consider moving operations to Tijuana to take advantage, as Michie put it, of Tijuana’s “low-cost labor relative to the high-cost yen.”

Last June, Canon opened a $26-million factory in Newport News, Va., to make laser printers and copiers.