FORREST CITY, Ark. (AP) — Sanyo Manufacturing Corp. will move more of its Forrest City operations to plants in Mexico and San Diego and reduce the number of workers remaining at the Arkansas factory.
The plant had 650 employees making cathode ray tubes for use in televisions five years ago. Since then, flat-screen TVs have made CRTs virtually obsolete, and Forrest City is down to 75 employees.
"We're not closing. We're going to continue to have the call center, sales, customer services, accounting and a lot of support functions, but we're moving some of the other things out there, which is a continuation of what we've done before," plant vice president Joe Keeton told The Times-Herald newspaper of Forrest City (http://is.gd/f4Qkce ).
Distribution, logistics and engineering divisions will move to Tijuana, Mexico, or San Diego, likely before March 31.
The Forrest City plant made 1.5 million CRTs in 2004, but by April 2007 it was anticipating orders for fewer than 300,000. One production line was being converted to flat-screens but that work was eventually moved to Tijuana.
"We're still in the LCD and plasma TV business," Keeton said. "We've just changed where they're being made and where they're being supported."