Smith Corona to Set Up Shop in Tijuana

By CHRIS KRAUL

Jan. 2, 1993 12 AM PT

Smith Corona Corp., the nation’s last typewriter manufacturer, will begin operating a huge plant on Tijuana’s Otay Mesa early this year.

The company said it is moving manufacturing capacity from Cortland in Upstate New York to Tijuana to take advantage of lower labor costs. A spokeswoman said that “fully burdened” labor costs, including insurance and taxes, are $18 to $20 an hour per employee in New York, contrasted with $4 an hour in Mexico.

The Mexican plant will employ 700 and measure more than 200,000 square feet of space. The Tijuana employees will replace some 775 full-time employees and 100 part-time New York employees who are being laid off.

More to Read

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.

Smith Corona to Set Up Shop in Tijuana

More to Read

More From the Los Angeles Times