Teledyne to Close Gardena Engineering Unit Friday : Restructuring: The operation, which once employed 130, is being moved to Ohio.
Teledyne will formally close its Sprague Engineering unit in Gardena Friday after the transfer of the unit’s production of industrial pumps to a company plant in Cleveland.
The company has laid off 70 workers at the Gardena facility during the past year. At one time, the operation employed 130 people.
Berkley Baker, a Teledyne spokesman, said the transfer is part of a restructuring announced in 1991. The company will rename its Cleveland unit Teledyne Republic/Sprague, he said.
Teledyne decided to close the Sprague facility in part because the “business climate in California is really bad, our worker’s compensation costs were pretty high and the company felt it could do better someplace else,” said Edgar Garcia, the unit’s controller.
Garcia, one of two remaining employees at the plant, said his last day will be Friday. He said he plans to start a paper bag manufacturing company.
Another portion of Sprague’s product line, aircraft ground support equipment, was sold to a newly formed company, Sprague Systems Division of Maney Aircraft, which will continue production at a nearby facility, officials said.
Separately, Teledyne reported that it earned $10.4 million on sales of $715.7 million in the fourth quarter, down from earnings of $28.1 million on sales of $818.2 million in the 1991 period.
For the full year, Teledyne earned $33.2 million on sales of $2.9 billion, up from a loss of $25.4 million on sales of $3.2 billion in 1991.
Teledyne said little about the earnings, except that the 1992 income included gains or charges from the sale of various operations and adjustments to income related to the restructuring.
Teledyne also said it would adopt new accounting rules on retiree medical benefits in the first quarter of 1993, but that it had not decided yet on how it would handle the charge. It said the accounting change will not have any effect on cash outlays for retiree benefits.
