Horiba Completes $20M Sale/Purchase Deal

IRVINE, CA-GlobeSt.com has learned exclusively that Horiba Instruments Inc., a US operations subsidiary of Horiba International Corp., the regional holding company in North and South America for the worldwide Horiba Group (whose parent is Horiba Ltd. of Kyoto, Japan), has completed a three-legged property transaction worth more than $20 million involving the sale of the firm's current US corporate headquarters building and the purchase of two additional properties. The purchase includes a different corporate-headquarters building and a parcel of vacant land owned by the Irvine Co.

Horiba Instruments manufactures and distributes an extensive array of instruments and systems for applications including automotive testing, process and environmental monitoring, in-vitro medical diagnostics, semi-conductor manufacturing and scientific analysis.

Stephen Schloemer, SVP of Colliers International, represented Horiba in the three transactions. According to Schloemer, “Horiba purchased the properties in order to extend its 40-plus-year roots in Orange County and expand and consolidate all of its Irvine-based operations into a single structure. This was an opportunity that will allow the company to be more efficient and to strengthen its long-time presence in Orange County.”

In the first part of the transaction, Horiba purchased the former Techko corporate headquarters buildings at 9755 Research Dr. with freeway frontage along I-5. The firm plans to expand to 41,000 square feet the current component of 15,000 square feet of office space. The expansion will include a large board room, lobby area, several conference rooms, showrooms, customer training rooms, patios, balconies and private offices.

Horiba will utilize the warehouse and distribution portion of the building to ship its products worldwide. That portion of the 63,000-square-foot building will feature dock-high loading, 24-ft. ceilings, a truck well that can accommodate three semi-trailer trucks at one time, secured storage areas and complete security systems.

In describing the second part of the transaction, Schloemer said in a prepared statement, “In order to make this deal work for the client, we had to acquire a little over an acre of adjacent vacant land from the Irvine Co. And, the Irvine Co. responded positively due to the small size of the land, the fact that it is contiguous to the company's site and because Horiba has had a long and positive history in Orange County and the local economy.”

The third part of the transaction involved Horiba selling its own 40,000-square-foot corporate headquarters building in the Irvine Business Center to DeVries International, one of the leading manufacturers of seals, o-rings, shaft seals, rubber-molded and rubber-to-metal products. Located on a 2.32-acre corner parcel at 17671 Armstrong Ave., the high-visibility, single-story building is composed of approximately 50% improved executive offices, engineering facilities and laboratory space and 50% manufacturing and warehouse space. It also includes ground level and dock-high loading facilities.

Industry sources say that the Techko building was purchased for $13 million, the original headquarters was sold for $6 million, and Horiba purchased the land for $3 million for the land. Cost to renovate the new property bring the total value of the transaction to $22 million.

As GlobeSt.com reported last week, Jeff Ingham, senior managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle, told us that office recovery in Orange County has not hit the speculative development stage yet. “With vacancy rates hovering in the mid-teens across Orange County, speculative development is still an afterthought for most area developers. Build-to-suits and the Irvine Co., the area's largest landlord, are the only players truly active with office-development projects.”