Last week, the federal government announced better than expected employment numbers for November. The state numbers are not announced until about three weeks later, but, nationally, the number of jobs lost, 11,000, was the smallest since the Great Recession began. Below are some interesting updates on West Orange County businesses.

The Boeing Company
With major operations in Seal Beach, Long Beach, El Segundo, Huntington Beach, and Anaheim, The Boeing Company is probably the largest employer in the area. As such, there is almost always something newsworthy happening at Boeing.

One of the largest components of the local Boeing scene is the 5,000 job producing C-17 military heavy airlifter assembly plant in Long Beach. While Boeing has not yet announced any new C-17 contracts, it was reported last week that Brittan is in talks to purchase another C-17. The Ministry of Defense is hoping to close a contract by the end of the year. This timeframe might be a bit optimistic, but it still is good news for the local C-17 builders.

Just as Boeing is scurrying around looking for more international customers for its big plane, a potential, but smaller, competitor is moving closer to its first flight. It was reported last week that the long delayed Airbus A400M military transporter could see its first flight as early as this week. Taking a page from the Boeing “win-the-congressional-appropriations-vote” play book, Airbus parent company European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. has been developing its American supplier network. Nevertheless, the A400M could still be dropped due to cost overruns, long delays, and a host of other problems. The folks at Boeing’s Long Beach facility certainly would not be sorry to see the smaller potential competitor fall off the industry’s radar screen.

Meanwhile, at Boeing’s local satellite manufacturing facility, another spacecraft was recently shipped to its launch site. The DIRECTV 12 satellite was shipped to Baikonur, Kazakhstan for launch on December 28. DIRECTV 12 is a Boeing 702 commercial satellite that will provide consumer HD television programming to millions of U.S. households. The satellite is manufactured in Boeing's satellite integration and test complex in El Segundo next door to their customer, DIRECTV.

DIRECTV 12 is the 11th satellite Boeing has built for the nation's No. 1 satellite TV service, enabling DIRECTV to continue to broaden its lineup of digital television programming services and expand its customer base. The new satellite will increase DIRECTV's high-definition (HD) capacity by 50 percent, and when combined with the DIRECTV 10 and 11 satellites that launched in 2007 and 2008, will enable DIRECTV to deliver 200 national and 1,500 local HDTV channels to millions of U.S. households. DIRECTV 12's national and spot-beam Ka-band payloads are designed to receive and transmit programming throughout the continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii.

Next, back to Boeing Long Beach, where the company announced it has received a $23 million contract from the U.S. Air Force for Phase 2 of the B-1 Laptop Controlled Targeting Pod software upgrade. The upgrade will add additional capability to the B-1 bomber aircraft's targeting system by allowing it to more accurately identify both stationary and moving targets.

Boeing in April finished development on the contract's Phase 1, a $28 million hardware and software-development phase. The Air Force so far has updated 40 of its 66 B-1s with the software and hardware that allows the aircraft to use the 15 interchangeable Sniper pods and the associated laptops assigned to the fleet.

Phase 2 will complete the integration of the Sniper pod with the B-1 software to deliver single-moving-target kill capability using the Guided Bomb Unit-54 (GBU-54) Laser Joint Direct Attack Munition (Laser JDAM). Laser JDAM adds a precision laser guidance set to the standard JDAM tail kit to acquire, track and engage mobile targets. The Air Force fielded the Laser JDAM in May 2008 and has used it successfully in combat.

An additional improvement will enable the targeting pod to find stationary targets and automatically send the target GPS coordinates via the B-1's avionics system to the weapons. This removes the need to enter the coordinates manually, dramatically reducing both response time and the potential for error.

Amonix
Seal Beach based manufacturer Amonix is “the world leading designer and proprietary producer of patented high-performance High Concentration Photovoltaic power generation systems for utility scale applications.”

On top of the City of Seal Beach’s apparent willingness to support this company with $10 million in private activity bonds (See below for our last biweekly update.), it was widely reported last week that Amonix Raised an additional $40 million as a private placement. This information could not be verified, but it was rumored to be part of a $98 million financing led by Lazard Freres & Company. It was also reported that Brian Robertson took over the company’s helm. He was CEO at Sunworks and President at SunEdison.

Frieda's Inc.,
In our last West Orange County Business and Jobs Biweekly Update (see below), we reported that Frieda's Inc. was to be honored for their contributions of surplus produce to a food bank. Now, they have received another significant recognition.

Frieda’s Specialty Produce was recently presented with a Family Owned Business Award by the Orange County Business Journal and Cal State Fullerton's Family Business Council for its business success, family involvement and industry and community contributions.

The Los Alamitos based company is a specialty produce wholesaler, distributor and marketer operated by sisters Karen Caplan and Jackie Caplan Wiggins, who purchased the company from their mother and founder, Frieda Caplan in 1990. Frieda founded the company in 1962 as a small stand at the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market. Today, Frieda’s Inc. is the premier distributor of specialty produce to supermarkets and foodservice distributors in North America.

This article is part of a regular biweekly survey of significant business and job developments of interest to West Orange County communities. This biweekly series appears every other Monday, alternating with our Orange County residential real estate Updates. In the context of national, statewide, and Orange County/Los Angeles County trends, this series focuses on, for the most part, local companies which are moving forward, even in these difficult economic times. Whether you are a senior level executive, an artist, salesperson, a contractor, or a customer service representative, your business opportunities will more likely be successful with companies which are ahead of the curve. If you are looking for a job, have a professional service to offer, or business-to-business products for sale, the progressive companies referenced in this series could be good places to start.