Sherwood Medical Is Building Plant on Otay Mesa
Sherwood Medical Co., a St. Louis-based manufacturer of disposable medical products, plans to significantly increase its corporate presence in San Diego and has already begun construction of a 210,000-square-foot manufacturing and warehouse facility on Otay Mesa near the Mexican border.
Sherwood, which makes catheters, tubes and syringes, is one of a number of medical supply companies to have moved or expanded operations in the San Diego-Tijuana region over the past year, mainly to take advantage of Tijuana’s low labor costs. Sherwood currently operates a maquiladora , or manufacturing facility, in Tijuana and has an office in Chula Vista.
Other medical supply companies that have announced expansions in the region recently include Imed, a division of Fisher Scientific Group, and Cutter Biological, a unit of Miles Laboratories, both in Tijuana. Baxter Travenol has announced plans for a huge expansion in Mexicali.
Sherwood, a subsidiary of New York-based American Home Products, is building its new plant in the San Diego Business Park in Otay Mesa between facilities already occupied by Maxell and Sanyo. Maxell is a Japan-based manufacturer of computer disks and audio- and videotapes. Sanyo, also of Japan, makes refrigerators at the plant. Both have maquiladoras in Tijuana.
Developer of Sherwood’s building is California Structures, a San Diego-based joint venture of Ahmanson Commercial Development, a division of parent Ahmanson & Co. that owns Home Savings of America, and a group of partners including Michael Murphy, Michael Strode, Dan Reid and Rich Wall.
Sherwood executives were unavailable for comment on the project Wednesday, and Murphy would neither confirm nor deny that the building is intended for Sherwood. Several sources connected to the project, however, confirmed that Sherwood will be the occupant of the building.
Just how many employees will be working at the site once it is open was unclear Wednesday, but sources expect the total to be in the “several hundreds.” Companywide, Sherwood Medical employs 5,000 and is part of a division that contributed 9% of American Home Products’ 1986 revenues of $4.9 billion.
The building is to include several “clean rooms” and will be finished by the end of this year, one source said. General contractor is Lusardi Construction.
Tony Ramirez, vice president of Made in Mexico, a Chula Vista-based firm that consults with companies considering locating operations in Mexico, said medical products companies are logical candidates for moves to Tijuana because of the labor cost advantages .
“The (disposable plastics) industry is labor intensive, and it doesn’t take a tremendous amount of highly skilled technicians to do what they do, which is mainly simple assembly and packaging,” Ramirez said.
Imed, which has a plant employing 100 in Tijuana, said in February that it may increase its Tijuana payroll to as many as 500 employees during the next two to five years. Baxter Travenol said in February that it will add 800,000 square feet to its plant space in Mexicali, where it makes a variety of disposable plastic hospital supplies.
In addition to the San Diego Business Park, which at completion will total 1.3 million square feet of buildings, California Structures also plans to start construction later this year on the 160-acre Brown Field Business Park. The site will someday be the site of 2.2 million square feet of industrial buildings, Murphy said.
