AST to Move Manufacturing Work to Fountain Valley

In an effort to shorten the commuting time of its workers, AST Research, a fast-growing computer manufacturing firm, has decided to move its Irvine manufacturing operation to Fountain Valley.

Albert Wong, a founder and executive vice president of AST Research, said that after studying alternative locations, AST decided to lease a 225,000-square-foot manufacturing building to be constructed near the intersection of Slater Avenue and Euclid Street. About 450 employees from the Irvine facility will work in the new manufacturing plant.

Wong said when AST’s manufacturing operation moves in about a year, it will become one of the first tenants in Southpark, a 140-acre business and light industrial park being developed by Fountain Valley Associates, a partnership of the Sakioka family, which owns the land, and McLachlan Investment Co. of Newport Beach.

AST announced last week that it was moving its corporate headquarters and marketing and engineering operations to the Irvine Spectrum.

But Wong said AST decided that its Orange County manufacturing operation instead should move closer to the Fountain Valley-Westminster area, where most of its factory workers live.

“The labor force is very important to a manufacturing company and we need to be close to where they live,” Wong said. In an era of low unemployment, competition for factory workers is keen and employers must be able to offer convenience as well as good wages, he said.

The Irvine firm decided it needed to consolidate and expand its facilities because of its growing business, Wong said. Founded in Irvine in 1980, AST has expanded to a worldwide work force of 1,900, including 1,000 in Orange County and others at manufacturing plants in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Southpark is taking shape on strawberry fields that are part of a Fountain Valley redevelopment area. The city hopes to boost its revenue from from sales and property taxes that the complex will generate. The city is trying to woo a Price Club outlet to the park.

Clint Sherrod, the city planning and building director, said the city estimates that over the next 21 years, Southpark will yield revenue of $51 million for the city in excess of the cost of additional city services.

AST fits into Fountain Valley’s plan of attracting to Southpark what the assistant city manager described as “nice, clean, light manufacturing.”