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Battery Maker Crosses Border

By CHRIS KRAUL
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San Diego County Business Editor

Altus Corp. said Monday it is moving its Technacell battery manufacturing division to San Diego and Tijuana from Santa Ana in June, a move that will cause lay-offs of 100 Altus workers at its Santa Ana plant.

The San Jose-based company, which makes lead acid batteries used in computers, toys and security systems, is building a 68,000-square-foot plant in Tijuana on a 5-acre site that may someday accommodate up to 170,000 square feet of Altus buildings, vice president William Markus said Monday. About 150 workers will be hired for the Tijuana facility.

Altus plans to relocate the division’s administrative and research staff from Santa Ana to offices in the Trolley Business Park in San Diego, Markus said. A closely held company, Altus reported sales last year of about $35 million.

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Altus employs 400 at a manufacturing plant in Mexicali but ruled out expansion there.

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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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