Sanyo to Double Size of Otay Mesa Plant
Sanyo E&E; Corp., the Japanese electronics and appliance manufacturer, is expected to more than double the size of its Otay Mesa plant, part of the company’s expansion in the San Diego-Tijuana area.
Alan Foster, Sanyo’s vice president of operations, said final approval to begin construction on a 430,000-square-foot addition to Sanyo’s existing 330,000-square-foot plant has not yet been received, but he and other company officials expect it to be in hand soon.
The addition will be used for storage of compact refrigerators now made at the existing Sanyo plant, as well as for storage of other Sanyo products assembled in Tijuana.
Sanyo E&E; is one of 87 companies under the Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. corporate umbrella. The Osaka, Japan-based conglomerate posted nearly $8 billion in worldwide sales last fiscal year.
In addition to its plant employing 350 on a 40-acre Otay Mesa site on the U.S. side of the border, the Sanyo parent firm has four plants in Tijuana totaling 875,000 square feet and 1,350 employees.
Sanyo’s presence in Baja California has grown quickly since 1983 when it opened its first Tijuana maquiladora , as the assembly plants are called. The Sanyo plants in Tijuana make products including televisions, fans, vacuum cleaners and batteries.
Purchased in 1986
Sanyo acquired the 40-acre Otay Mesa site and its 330,000-square-foot plant in 1986 in a trade with San Diego development firm California Structures. To get the Otay Mesa site, which is within walking distance of the Otay Mesa border crossing, Sanyo gave up its 20-acre, 400,000-square-foot plant in Kearny Mesa that opened in 1979.
Sanyo decided to leave Kearny Mesa after the area became too crowded with smaller businesses and surface traffic to suit a manufacturer of Sanyo’s size. “It reached the point that it became a problem just getting our delivery trucks in and out,” Foster said.
Sanyo’s experience as a San Diego corporate citizen has included some rough spots. Shortly after beginning operations in San Diego, Sanyo became the first Japanese electronics firm in the area to be unionized: the Communications Workers of America succeeded in organizing Sanyo assembly-line workers in 1981.
The unionization came the same year that Sanyo discontinued its Fisher line of compact stereo units. Fisher, which at one point was turning out 300 stereos a day in Kearny Mesa, closed because the unit could not compete with cheaper stereos assembled in Italy, Korea and Taiwan, Foster said.
The discontinuance of Fisher caused Sanyo payroll to drop from 700 to 350 through “attrition” and did not lead directly to layoffs, Foster insisted.
He attributed the union’s success in organizing Sanyo workers to poor communications between Japanese management and the U. S. workers.
