Balda C. Brewer Inc. USA, a maker of plastic molds used in medical devices and other products, is closing a plant in Irvine this month and cutting 193 jobs.
The company plans to shift more jobs out of OC with the relocation of other operations from Anaheim to the Inland Empire and San Diego County.
“This decision was driven by the fact that our largest eyewear customer had decided to insource the production conducted by Balda,” said Oliver Oechsle, chief executive of Balda C. Brewer’s German-based parent company, Balda AG, in a statement. “The plant in Irvine was mainly focusing on this customer’s products.”
Balda C. Brewer also is planning to merge its Anaheim operation into its new plant in Ontario because it “offers a significantly improved infrastructure, especially the clean room environment,” Oechsle said.
The company has leased a plant in Ontario that was previously owned by an unnamed medical technology corporation. It will move “all other remaining departments” from Anaheim to Ontario and another plant in Oceanside, Oechsle added.
A letter sent to the California Employment Development Department at the end of December confirmed that Balda C. Brewer “plans to close its Irvine facility located at 16661 Jamboree Road…on or about Feb. 26, 2016. Accordingly, there is expected to be an elimination of jobs and termination of employment at that facility.
“Given that the entire worksite is expected to be closed, it is anticipated that this closure and these terminations of employment will be permanent and that employee separations will commence on or about Feb. 26, 2016, or within 14 days thereafter,” Balda C. Brewer said in the letter.
The majority of jobs eliminated are production operators, with 67 cuts, and what are referred to as “temporary” production workers, with 60 cuts, according to the letter.
The company hasn’t filed Worker Adjustment and Training Notice paperwork for Anaheim.
Balda AG, which is based in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany, came to California in 2012 when it bought what was then known as C. Brewer Co. for $43.7 million.
C. Brewer had 500 workers in Anaheim, Irvine and Ontario at the time of the deal.
Family-owned C. Brewer was founded in 1966; its principals were brothers Chuck Brewer III and Michael Brewer. The company occupied about 135,000 square feet of space and operated more than 75 injection molding presses at the time of the acquisition.
C. Brewer had bought a plant in Ontario from San Diego-based CareFusion Corp. a year before the Balda AG deal and had dedicated that site to molding and assembling medical devices.
Acquiring C. Brewer was important to fulfill Balda AG’s desire to have a presence with its own production locations, Dominik Müser, the company’s former chief executive, told industry publication Plastics News at the time of the deal.
Balda AG was founded in 1908 in Dresden, Germany, and was originally a manufacturer of cameras.
