First its headquarters, now its industrial hub; Epson America Inc. is more fully making Orange County its home base through a recent 233,705-square-foot deal to relocate its warehouse and distribution hub to the region.
The printer and scanner manufacturer, which moved its headquarters from Long Beach to a newly built office complex in Los Alamitos during the pandemic, inked a deal to pre-lease space for the second phase of Huntington Gateway Phase, a Sares Regis Group development currently underway in Surf City, Epson executives confirmed to the Business Journal.
Epson’s lease is for an entire building at the industrial development, at 5383 Bolsa Ave.
The site is about a mile and a half west of the San Diego (405) Freeway.
The company will move its warehouse from Carson to the new building when it delivers early next year at the intersection of Bolsa Chica Street and Bolsa Avenue.
Carson and Indianapolis had served as the company’s main logistics center, with the facilities including manufacturing automation robots and color labeling systems, according to prior reports.
It’s the second announced tenant for the second phase of the Huntington Gateway development, which kicked off construction this year following the delivery of the first phase. The 260,000-square-foot industrial building constructed in the first phase is fully occupied by Amazon.
Local Firm
Epson’s industrial move follows its office relocation.
The company in 2020 announced it would relocate its headquarters from Long Beach to the Katella Office Campus, a recently redeveloped 150,000-square-foot site in Los Alamitos.
The company started moving into the facility that year when its Long Beach lease ended, and continued to move workers in phases, with delays brought on by the pandemic.
Epson was previously based in Long Beach for about 20 years.
Epson’s new office traded hands during that time frame for $59 million; a South Korean private investor, Fine Investment Corp., bought the property from the local office of Lincoln Property Co.
With approximately 600 employees working out of the new office, Epson ranks as No. 2 among top employers in the city, trailing only the Los Alamitos Medical Center, according to city records.
It’s unknown how many more employees will make the move to Orange County following the Huntington Beach relocation.
New Products
Japan-based Seiko Epson Corp., which owns the company, also produces industrial robots and 3LCD projectors, in addition to printers and scanners. Epson America Inc. is the company’s regional headquarters for the U.S., Canada, and Latin America.
It appears the new warehouse will feature new products—Epson last month announced plans to expand its business printer portfolio with the addition of a new color printer, the WorkForce Pro WF-C4310. The printer is reported to have the lowest power consumption in its class.
The worldwide Epson group generates annual sales north of $6.8 billion. As of a few years ago the U.S. division was reported to bring in the most sales of any group.
Orange County’s long been a hub for makers of commercial printers, scanners and fax machines. While Epson and others including local units of Toshiba Corp. have continued to revamp their product lines and local operations amid changing customer needs and tech advances, some, such as Ricoh Electronics, have slimmed down their local presence and real estate portfolio substantially (see story, page 8).
Top Deals
Epson’s lease was the fifth-largest industrial deal to occur in the third quarter.
It’s the third company to ink a deal at Huntington Gateway.
Huntington Beach-based Cambro Manufacturing, a maker and distributor of food storage products, is also reported to be a tenant in the second phase currently under construction. The firm last year inked a nearly 434,000-square-foot lease to occupy a new building planned for the project.
The deal, the largest new industrial lease signed locally last year, added to a growing industrial base in the city for family-owned Cambro, which got its start in Huntington Beach in 1951 by brothers Argyle and William Campbell.
The Huntington Gateway development site was previously home to some of the local operations of Boeing Co. The Chicago-based aerospace and defense giant has sold roughly 90 acres in a series of transactions totaling almost $190 million in 2018 and 2019 to Newport Beach’s Sares Regis Group.
Brokers indicate the next phase will deliver in early 2023.
