Plane parts maker Eaton Aerospace LLC is consolidating in the Irvine Spectrum.
The company, a division of Cleveland-based industrial equipment maker Eaton Corp., has signed a 10-year lease for about 140,000 square feet of office and industrial space.
The majority of the space is set to be used for manufacturing by subsidiary Argo-Tech Corp., a maker of fuel pumps for military jets.
Eaton acquired the fuel pump business in early 2007 when it bought Argo-Tech’s parent AT Holdings Corp. for $695 million. Argo-Tech’s lease in Costa Mesa expires next year.
Eaton Aerospace, which also makes electronics for planes, is moving its headquarters from its current home near John Wayne Airport to the Irvine Spectrum.
The company plans to keep a second Costa Mesa plant it had before the Argo-Tech buy.
Plans are in the works to have the new building ready by the end of the year, though renovations might not be done until the second quarter, according to Mike Nieves, vice president of operations for Eaton Aerospace.
Landlord Irvine Company has been marketing the building for more than two years. Chip Wright of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s Newport Beach office worked with Eaton on the lease.
Eaton’s search for a new home was narrowed down to five spots within a 25-mile radius, according to Nieves.
“It was important to us that we wouldn’t lose any employees,” he said.
During the past year, Eaton’s added 140 workers for a total of 390 in the county. Part of the gain came from buying Argo-Tech.
The rest of the growth has come from military contracts the company has picked up.
Eaton Aerospace needed a building it could work and expand in, Nieves said.
The new building has high ceilings to handle manufacturing operations, he said. The company could expand manufacturing by as much as 15% at the site, according to Nieves.
The majority of the work done by Argo-Tech is “table-top assembly,” which relies on semi-skilled and technical workers who put together pieces made elsewhere.
Eaton’s locally made parts go into many military planes, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the F-18 Hornet fighter plane and the V-22 Osprey, which has tilting rotors to allow them to act as helicopters.
Contracts
A recent award to supply parts for 167 Osprey planes is expected to bring the company $120 million in revenue during the next five years.
Eaton also expects to benefit from a recent Navy order for 36 Boeing Co. P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine planes, which Eaton makes parts for.
That should help fill a potential void of work for Eaton from Boeing Co.’s C-17 Globemaster cargo planes, which may no longer be produced in Long Beach.
Argo-Tech also was listed as a subcontractor of Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. for work on its KC-45 midair refueling tanker that is competing with Boeing for a $35 billion government contract.
Eaton is run by President Bradley Morton, who joined the company in 2003 after coming from Honeywell International Inc.’s advanced circuits division in Minnesota.
Under Morton’s direction, Eaton began to market itself for bigger contracts that relied on multiple levels of work for planes, rather than being just a single-part supplier.
During Morton’s five years with the company, Eaton also has acquired FR-HiTemp Inc. and Stanley Aviation Corp., divisions of Britain’s Cobham PLC, and Waltham, Mass.-based PerkinElmer Inc.’s aerospace division.
