Tandon Assembly Plant Will Open in Moorpark

Tandon plans to open a 105,000-square-foot plant in Moorpark to assemble IBM-compatible personal computers.

The factory, expected to begin production in October, will be larger than the Chatsworth-based company’s plant in Thousand Oaks, where 425 workers assemble computers from parts Tandon makes in the Far East. Company officials would not say how many people will be employed at the Moorpark plant, at 405 Science Drive in the Freeway Business Center industrial park.

Tandon executives disclosed two months ago that they would need a new plant to accommodate the company’s shift from making disk drives, which store and retrieve data for computers, to manufacturing personal computers.

The company, which makes 4,000 to 5,000 computers a month now, hopes to make as many as 35,000 a month by the end of next year.

Tandon now makes a personal computer for Tandy that is sold in Tandy’s Radio Shack stores and also sells a Tandon-brand computer in Europe.

The company last month announced that it will make personal computers for Xerox and Tandem Computers through contracts that overall could be worth as much as $300 million over the next three years. The company is believed to have reached a similar agreement with Prime Computer.