Japanese Firm Smooths Way for Setting Up <i> Maquiladoras</i>
The decision by Asahi Overseas Corp. to build a telephone answering machine repair plant in Tijuana is indicative of more than just the flood of Japanese companies setting up factories in Tijuana to take advantage of low-cost labor.
Asahi Overseas (AOC) is also one of many Japanese companies that over the past year has relied on the Mitsui Kensetsu construction management and consulting firm to find a location, gather permits, prepare cost analyses and manage construction of the Mexican plants called maquiladoras. AOC of Torrance and its parent company Asahi Corp. of Japan own 49% of PhoneMate of Torrance.
Mitsui Kensetsu and its vice president, Kimihide Takimura, have also guided Canon, Casio, Pioneer and Kyowa Electric in their selection of Tijuana sites.
Mitsui Kensetsu, which recently set up an office in downtown San Diego, also guided Hirakawa Electric Wire to a plant site in Mexicali and Toshiba to its location in Ciudad Juarez.
The 40-year-old Takimura said he is also working with a dozen Japanese companies likely to set up plants in Baja California in coming months.
Takimura has become well-known among Japanese businessmen as someone who can turn over ready-to-operate “turnkey” plants to his Japanese clients. Fluent in Spanish, he is also someone who can smooth over cultural conflicts that inevitably arise when Mexican, Japanese and American interests collide in the construction and operation of the plants.
“He’s a tremendous resource for Japanese companies in Mexico,” said Sean Doyle, a broker with Coldwell Banker commercial real estate in San Diego, who follows the maquiladora market in Tijuana. “He’s done his homework, and he truly knows how to initiate maquiladora programs and follow through to the end.”
One of Takimura’s advantages is that he is the only man he knows of who is licensed as an engineer both in Japan and Mexico. As such, he can translate Japanese plant specifications into Mexican realities during construction.
Before arriving in Mexico City in 1983 to head up the company’s Mexico operations, Takimura worked for Mitsui Kensetsu in the Middle East, directing construction of major plants and university buildings in Iraq and Iran.
Takimura helped Asahi Overseas locate a 5-acre site in the El Aguila business park in the southeastern part of Tijuana, a site that can accommodate 120,000 square feet of buildings.
Asahi will start with a 50,000-square-foot repair plant to be completed by the end of this year. Asahi Overseas may expand the site later to include an assembly plant, executive vice president Ichiro Sone said Monday. PhoneMate machines are now made in Singapore and Malaysia, Sone said.
Sone said the company will be moving some employees to San Diego to help manage the plant,but he did not know how many. Asahi Overseas now has only five U. S. employees. Total workers at the Tijuana site could eventually exceed 350.
Last November, AOC and its parent Asahi Corp. made a $6.50 per share tender offer to acquire the 51% of outstanding PhoneMate shares they do not already own. A shareholder meeting to vote on the offer will be held in March or April, Sone said.
PhoneMate, which has 280 employees, posted a profit of $64,000 on sales of $112.6 million in fiscal 1987, the last full year for which figures are available, Sone said.
