CD and CD-ROM Unit Boosts Technicolor

Technicolor Inc.’s Camarillo plant has added a compact-disc duplicating unit to its video operation, and is already turning out 65,000 CDs and CD-ROMs daily.

Since the operation was launched in February, the company says it has produced 2 million CDs and CD-ROMs--1 million of them in the past month alone. CD-ROMs, which account for 60% of the output, look like ordinary CDs but combine audio, video and text content.

The expansion has added 110 new workers at the former Everest & Jennings Inc. wheelchair plant on Mission Oaks Boulevard, bringing the total payroll at the plant to 1,200, reports Pierre Loubet, sales and marketing director of the new optical media services division.

The division expects to hire 40 more workers in 1995, Loubet said. “The start-up has been most successful, but at this time, we’re not aiming to be No. 1 in the CD field. There are too many studios and production companies that do their own duplicating.”

But he said Technicolor still hopes to be a world leader in disc production within five years. The company already claims to be No. 1 in video, and it’s generally acknowledged to be the world leader in theatrical film processing. Technicolor is owned by a British concern, Carlton Communications.

As it does with movies and videos, Technicolor copies CDs and CD-ROMs for producers and distributors who then market the products themselves.

Already, the CD operation has forced Technicolor to expand beyond its 500,000-square-foot Camarillo facility, which Loubet said is the largest free-standing industrial plant in Ventura County.

The firm recently moved its distribution center to a large building on Del Norte Road.