James Hardie Irrigation HQ Will Close
The new owners of James Hardie Irrigation said Monday they will close the company’s Laguna Niguel headquarters and warehouse later this year, laying off at least 15 of the 99 employees there and offering transfers to the others.
The new jobs would be at the Riverside manufacturing and headquarters facility of newly formed Toro Hardie Irrigation, a unit of Minnesota irrigation equipment maker Toro Co.
A Toro spokesman said the Orange County location will be closed because the lease is expiring and is too expensive to renew.
The relocation to Riverside, where Toro Hardie now employs about 700 people, is scheduled to begin in June and be completed by mid-November.
Toro, a major producer of irrigation equipment for golf courses and for the do-it-yourself homeowner market, acquired James Hardie Irrigation in December for $130 million.
Hardie, which had been a unit of Australia’s James Hardie Industries, specializes in residential irrigation systems marketed to professional irrigation contractors. It has about 1,000 employees at factories in Australia, Texas, Florida and El Cajon in San Diego County.
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