Technicolor, due to complete a massive downsizing of its Camarillo facility shortly, has placed the campus it occupies there on the block. The company will lease back a portion of the property for its remaining operation. Technicolor, which has called Camarillo home to its Home Entertainment Services unit, currently owns three adjacent buildings on East Mission Oaks Boulevard. The move follows an announcement earlier this year that it will let 600 employees go from its DVD replication, packaging and distribution unit. Those layoffs are expected to be completed in August. In downsizing the unit, Technicolor, which made film history in 1938 with the production of “Wizard of Oz”, is doing what it has always done moving to restructure its business to reflect technological advances. With the maturing of the DVD market, the company is moving into the next stage of technology, digital production and distribution. A similar reorganization has been underway at Thomson, Technicolor’s French parent, for several years. “During the last two years we made rapid progress to exit the heavily loss-making consumer electronics businesses, a necessity if Thomson was to succeed,” wrote Frank E. Dangeard, chairman and CEO of Thomson in a letter to shareholders in the company’s most recent annual report. “In parallel, we invested to establish promising businesses which are now boosting, and will continue to boost, revenue growth: content services, network services, broadcast & networks and access products.” The Technicolor division, which includes content services, including production and post-production capabilities for filmmakers; theatrical services, which processes and distributes motion picture films; home entertainment services, providing DVD and CD replication services to studios, software developers and others; and network services, which offers online digital content distribution networks, employs some 15,000 workers in the U.S. Many of those workers are housed in two facilities in Burbank as well as Camarillo. The company’s bread and butter, management said, is found primarily in its theatrical and home entertainment units. In the near term, future growth will come from its production and post-production capabilities. And in the long term, digital cinema and video-on-demand support, businesses that are still in their infancy, are expected to fuel the company. Meanwhile, with the leveling off of the DVD market, a portion of the business has been relocated to lower-cost locations. In 2001, Technicolor purchased a Guadalajara, Mexico facility for DVD manufacturing and packaging, and in 2005, the company completed an expansion of that facility to 28,000 square feet. Technicolor officials claim the facility is the largest and most advanced facility of its kind in North America. As the technology shifts to digital applications, the company has increased staffing in its network services unit, which focuses on cable, broadcast and satellite platforms as well as the out-of-home marketplace.
