Printronix Lays Off 50, Will Temporarily Close Plant

Printronix Inc. has laid off 50 people and will shut down its Irvine manufacturing plant for 1 week this month in response to slackening demand for its computer printers.

The layoffs were made Nov. 11 and involved about 6% of Printronix’s 800 Orange County employees. About equal numbers of hourly production and salaried management employees were terminated, said Robert A. Kleist, president and chief executive.

“We’ve seen a general slowdown in orders the last couple months,” Kleist said Monday. “We don’t expect any big pickup in the next few months.”

The company plans additional production and employment cutbacks at its factories in Singapore and Holland, Kleist said. He declined to give the size of those reductions.

The layoffs follow an 18-month production buildup during which Printronix boosted employment by 300 people. “We were projecting much more growth, and then the slowdown came,” Kleist said.

Kleist said revenue for the third quarter ended Dec. 25 probably will be down slightly from the $31 million recorded last year.

For the 6 months ended Sept. 23, Printronix’s revenue rose 23% to $71.8 million. Net income was $1.6 million, compared to a loss of $1 million during the same period a year earlier.

Printronix makes heavy-duty printers that are connected to minicomputers, which are mid-size computers used in factories and large offices. The minicomputer industry has been in a slump, in part because of inroads by increasingly powerful personal computer networks that perform the same tasks as minicomputers but cost substantially less.