Food-Container Company Latest to Leave Silicon Valley

In what’s starting to look like a trend, another Silicon Valley company has decided to forsake the region’s dense traffic and skyrocketing rents for cheaper quarters elsewhere.

Premier Plastics Inc., a food-container company currently based in San Jose, will move its manufacturing plant and about 115 jobs to the Central Valley town of Lathrop. Premier Plastics, a division of Tacoma, Wash.-based Premier Industries, made the announcement on Tuesday.

Company sources say Premier will build a new plant in the Crossroads Commerce Center off I-5. It will take up about 137,000 sf of a 250,000-sf facility. The nearby freeway access will allow the plant easy shipments.

Sources cited rapidly rising Silicon Valley land costs, plus steadily worsening traffic in the area, as reasons for relocation.

The nonprofit economic-development group San Joaquin Partnership helped convince Premier to bring their plant to Lathrop. Sources at the group said other companies are looking at the space that will not be occupied by Premier, but would not specify which firms.