By PURNIMA MUDNAL
Japan’s Fuji Photo Film Co. has leased an extra 125,000 square feet of space in Cypress and plans to shift warehouse operations in Commerce and La Mirada to the building.
The move came as part of Fuji’s renewal of its lease for offices at the Cypress Corporate Center, where the company has 225,000 square feet of space near Katella Avenue and Valley View Street.
Fuji leased the added space at 11150 Hope St. after Konica Minolta Inc., another Japanese company that competes with Fuji in film, moved to a smaller space nearby earlier this year.
The value of the 6.5-year lease wasn’t disclosed.
Plans call for bringing Fuji’s disposable and digital cameras, film and development gear and other products under one roof. The company hopes to cut down on shipping costs, delays and mistakes, according to spokesman Tom Shay.
“Shipping thousands and thousands of units over months and years, there’s got to be a tremendous amount of time and cost saved,” he said.
Fuji considered leaving Cypress for a bigger space somewhere else, said Laird Perkins of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., who handled the lease for the company.
“We had been looking for a long time,” he said. “But then we found the building next door and it just made more sense.”
Fuji plans to move into the new building in early July. The company plans to shift an undisclosed number of jobs to Cypress but doesn’t plan on hiring, Shay said.
A Hollywood facility that provides film to movie studios is set to stay put, Shay said.
Some of the space in Cypress will be used to create displays for stores that sell Fuji film, said Peter Schmidt, Fuji’s vice president of materials management and logistics.
Fuji is Japan’s top maker of film and other photo products and competes fiercely here with Eastman Kodak Co., the leading film maker. Tokyo-based Fuji has had its West Coast office in Cypress for the past 15 years or so.
It’s one of many Japanese companies that have set up in Cypress, which is close to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and Los Angeles International Airport.
Fuji, as well as Kodak and others, are wrestling with a falloff in film sales as more photography goes digital.
“Some parts of our business are going up and there are other parts which are declining,” Shay said.
Digital cameras overtook film cameras sales in 2003. They were the most popular electronics gift in 2004 according to Arlington, Va.-based Consumer Electronics Association.
