O.C. Computer Firm to Move Offices North

A small Orange County manufacturer of computer data storage products is transferring its corporate headquarters from Irvine to Northern California as part of a merger.

Half a dozen jobs are expected to be lost in the shuffle as UltraStor Corp.’s management offices move to the San Francisco Bay Area city of Fremont, and three of those involve people who have transferred to a San Diego County site, said UltraStor’s chief executive, Thomas R. Parkinson.

UltraStor is merging with GigaTrend Inc. of Carlsbad, another maker of data storage devices, said Parkinson, who has been running both companies for the last five months as part of a refinancing and restructuring of the two. He said UltraStor will be the surviving company, with a total of 110 employees in several locations.

Its 4-year-old plant in the Irvine Spectrum industrial park will remain open as a sales and product support office with about 20 employees, Parkinson said. As UltraStor corporate headquarters, the facility had 26 employees, including a small specialized manufacturing staff.

The corporate and manufacturing operations are being moved to Fremont, Parkinson said, “because that’s where the engineering staff is, and it is easier to relocate corporate people than to shift 20 engineers.” He said the move is not motivated by any dissatisfaction with Orange County’s business or economic climate.

A GigaTrend manufacturing facility in Carlsbad will continue operating, but GigaTrend will survive the merger only as a brand name manufactured by UltraStor, which recently raised $850,000 in a debt offering and restructured $2.4 million in debt.