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Canon May Divert Jobs to Mexico

By CHRIS KRAUL
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San Diego County Business Editor
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 the 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.

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Just how many of the 600 additional employees will be put in Tijuana if the option is exercised has not been decided, Michie 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.

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Chris Kraul

Chris Kraul covered South America for the Los Angeles Times from his base in Bogota, Colombia. He joined the paper in 1987 and was business editor of the San Diego edition until it closed in 1992. He then began covering the border and Mexican economies until his assignment to The Times’ Mexico City bureau in 2001. He reopened the paper’s Bogota bureau in 2006. He has also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a graduate of the University of South Florida and also has been a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union-Tribune and the San Diego Business Journal.

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