O.C. medical company to add 1,000 jobs — in Utah - Jan Norman on Small Business : The Orange County Register

O.C. medical company to add 1,000 jobs — in Utah

October 10th, 2009, 6:00 am · 7 Comments · posted by Jan Norman, small-business columnist

Edwards Lifesciences Corp., an Irvine-based developer of heart valve and other devices, has signed a long-term lease for a new facility in Utah that will add 1,000 jobs over the next 15 years.

The 200,000-square-foot building in Draper near Salt Lake City will be a state-of-the-art manufacturing and research and development plant, the company said.

The state of Utah gave Edwards $11.5 million in incentives to retain the 228 employees it already in the state and add another 1,000 business and engineering jobs in the next 15 years. The city of Draper pitched in $3 million also tied to job creation over seven years.

Edwards has 6,300 employees worldwide and 2,000 in Orange County.

“Our new (Utah) facility will allow us to evolve our world class operations to support Edwards’ long-term global product supply strategy,” said Paul C. Redmond, Edwards’ corporate vice president, Global Corporate Operations.

It is the latest example of California companies either moving or expanding to other states. In July, Telmar Network Technology announced that it had moved its headquarters from Irvine to Plano, Texas. And in May, Fuel Systems Solutions said it was moving headquarters from Santa Ana to New York.

That’s on top of such high-profile closures as the Toyota closing its northern California light-truck plant in March 2010.

Most surveys rank California low on business friendliness scales, such as one by the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council that ranks California 49th, and another by CEO magazine that ranks it worst.

But an Edwards spokeswoman Amanda Fowler wouldn’t say that Edwards is fleeing California, just that Utah’s “incentives are pretty attractive.”

As the first step of Edeards planned Utah expansion, it will transfer manufacturing of its cannula and embolic protection devices from an existing plant in Midvale, Utah, by mid-2010.

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TheBoss says:

October 10, 2009 at 7:25 am

Let’s see, Hershey abandons there 600,000 sq ft. Redlands distribution facility the first of this year. A facility I might add they built in 2002. Why! They can’t afford to do business in California anymore and Utah was kind enough to give us a multi-million dollar tax incentive.

Consolidated Bakeries left in 2008. Took over 1500 jobs with them. The reason they gave for leaving. It will be impossible for us to meet the 20% energy reduction requirements that are going to go into effect in the coming years.

The Govenator and his band of idiots are now talking about changing the tax code on businesses in California to tax services provided. For example a plumber comes to your house, tax on the hourly labor. Get your oil changed, tax on that. Dental implants, tax on that. Flu shot, tax on that.

When is enough, actually really going to be enough!!!

TheAllKnowing says:

October 10, 2009 at 9:38 am

“Edeards”? I’m hungover and still caught that one.

And shouldn’t it be “Edwards’ ” in the context of the sentence? Or in the case of the OCR, “Edeards’ “?

Movedaway says:

October 10, 2009 at 1:00 pm

Sadly, even if they want to stay here, they cannot hire young people. In California, only people over 40 can read, write and do math any more. There is simply no point to interviewing entry level unless you are looking for illegals (who will at least do a days work.)

The truth is this: California schools stopped producing employable people 25 years ago. To waste the time trying to retrain these losers is simply a futile exercise.

gary says:

October 10, 2009 at 2:53 pm

i agree , i brought my 15 year old grand daughter out to watch the space station orbit , and she asked what space station ? and she was serious . what happened to current events in school ?

Donkey says:

October 10, 2009 at 1:04 pm

The politicians have given all the money away to the public employee unions and the amonts are unsustainable. So they believe that the weather here is so great that no one will leave, but they are wrong.
The taxpayers are not getting their monies worth in this state and they are leaving also.
The math will clear up the problem once the tax base has left the state. Then the pay, pensions and benifits will come in line with reality.

JD says:

October 10, 2009 at 1:44 pm

Is anyone really surprised here?

OCRez says:

October 10, 2009 at 2:31 pm

State of California, please wake up and be more business friendly! We need more jobs here or else your budget problems will continue to get worse and worse!

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