Forklift Firm Announces Move to Georgia : Industry: Komatsu joins the exodus from Southern California. New site offers more capacity and fewer restrictions.

Komatsu Forklift USA Inc. said Tuesday that it is joining the exodus from Southern California. The company, one of the world’s biggest forklift manufacturers, said it is leaving its La Palma plant in late 1995 for a larger facility outside Atlanta.

The move will mean the loss of nearly 140 sales and manufacturing jobs from Orange County, which was hit hard Monday when Hughes Aircraft said it was closing most of its Fullerton complex and laying off or moving 6,000 workers.

Komatsu joins a parade of smaller companies that have given up on the regulations and cost of doing business in the Golden State over the past few years to seek more friendly business environs elsewhere.

Akira (Art) Otsuka, Komatsu’s president, said the company might keep a small manufacturing operation here, but that would depend on demand for the product. He said the company now produces nearly 500 forklifts a month and will reach the plant’s capacity of 600 a month by the end of next year.

Because the new plant, to be built in Covington, Ga., will be able to produce up to 1,000 forklifts a month, Otsuka was not optimistic that the La Palma plant would remain open much beyond a break-in period for the Georgia facility.

“We have not determined yet who will come with us,” he said. “We do not know exactly how long we will have parallel operations there and here, and we don’t know how the market will be then.”

Production at the La Palma plant is restricted by state air quality regulations that prohibit the painting of more than 600 forklifts a month, Otsuka said. There are no such restrictions in Georgia, he said. In addition, labor costs and other fixed expenses are lower in Georgia.

Komatsu Forklift, a subsidiary of heavy equipment maker Komatsu Ltd. in Japan, also wants to be closer to its customers. As many as 80% of its forklifts are sold east of the Mississippi, Otsuka said. In addition, transportation costs are unusually high because most of the heavy parts for making the forklifts come from Michigan and other Eastern and Midwestern states.

“Also, the government of the state of Georgia, the county and the city are offering financial incentives,” Otsuka said. Among the inducements, he said, are tax concessions, free training for workers and incentives for plant construction.