An Anaheim maker of industrial motors open since the 1940s expects to finish laying off some 80 workers this month.
Electra-Gear, part of Regal-Beloit Corp. of Beloit, Wis., said it planned to close the Anaheim operation because of the high cost of doing business in California.
“Frankly, it is a difficult decision because it’s a very good facility with excellent people,” said Henry Knueppel, president and chief operating officer of Regal-Beloit, in a recent conference call with investors. “But the cost of doing business in California, and the fact that the customer base primarily is in Mississippi and the East, makes it the right thing to do and a cost-effective thing to do.”
Electra-Gear makes small aluminum and steel motors used on ships, in food processing and drug plants and at car washes and in exercise equipment.
The division has a long history. Electra-Gear was founded in 1946 as Electra Motors Inc., to make small electric and gear motors.
Starting in 1954, Electra-Gear was bought and sold a couple of times, including a buyback by its original owners in 1962. In 1965, Hewitt-Robbins, a unit of defense contractor Litton Industries Inc. (now part of Northrop Grumman Corp.) acquired Electra-Gear.
The business saw a couple more ownership changes in the 1970s. By 1987, Power-Tech International came to own the business and sold it to Regal-Beloit in 1989.
Like other manufacturers, Regal-Beloit is opting to shift work from here to elsewhere.
“We have excess capacity throughout our manufacturing system,” Knueppel said. ‘We’re going to continue our consolidation.”
Besides motors, Regal-Beloit makes motion control and electrical power transmission products. The company had sales of $535 million for the first nine months of the year, up 14% from a year earlier.
Last month, Regal-Beloit said it’s buying a motor unit from General Electric Co. for $379 million.
Some of the Anaheim workers were offered jobs elsewhere in the company. But most of the jobs simply moved to other states. Regal-Beloit has facilities in Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, South Dakota and Canada.
Regal-Beloit’s move follows those of other manufacturers that have moved work out of OC or expanded elsewhere because of the higher cost of doing business here.
Earlier this year, Ceradyne Inc., a Costa Mesa maker of industrial and military ceramics, expanded in Lexington, Ky. The company still makes about 80% of its ceramics in OC.
Last year, Kansas City, Mo.-based Milbank Man-ufacturing Co. closed an Anaheim plant that made electrical gear and shifted the work to Missouri.
