Tualatin's ninth-largest private employer just got bigger.

Kai USA, the company behind Kershaw, Zero Tolerance, and Shun knives, cut the ribbon July 22, on a 40,000-square-foot expansion of its production and warehousing campus at 1800 SW Teton Avenue.

The addition brings the company's local footprint to roughly 95,000 square feet, according to facility data listed on the company's LinkedIn profile.

Tualatin Mayor Frank Bubenik attended the ceremony and called the expansion a vote of confidence in the city's workforce. In his Mayor's Corner column published July 28 in Tualatin Life, Bubenik wrote: "Companies don't grow their footprint without real belief in a community's workforce and future — and we don't take that belief for granted."

Kai USA employs about 270 people at the Tualatin site, including machinists, assemblers, designers, and engineers. The company is the leading employer in Tualatin's Materials & Goods Manufacturing cluster, according to Bubenik.

Kershaw Knives described the project as the opening of a second facility in Tualatin in a July 22 post on X, calling it part of the company's continued investment in American-made manufacturing.

A 23-year Tualatin presence

Pete Kershaw founded the company in Portland in 1974 after leaving Gerber Legendary Blades. The brand became a subsidiary of the KAI Group, a family-owned Japanese company headquartered in Seki, Japan, in 1977.

Kai USA moved its U.S. production from Wilsonville to Tualatin in 2003, according to Wikipedia's entry on Kershaw Knives.

Noritaka "Nori" Sawamura has led Kai USA as chief operating officer since 2019, succeeding Jack Igarashi, who ran the company for more than two decades, according to the company's website.

Manufacturing anchors Tualatin's economy

The expansion lands at a strong moment for Tualatin's industrial sector. Manufacturing is the city's largest private industry, employing 8,654 workers and accounting for 27% of total private employment, with an average annual wage of $103,396, according to the city's 2026 Economic Landscape Analysis.

Only 6% of people who work in Tualatin also live in the city, according to that same analysis, meaning Kai USA's 270 jobs draw workers from across the region, including Tigard, Durham, and surrounding communities.

Beyond the production floor, Kai USA donates products to fundraisers for local schools, food banks, youth sports teams, and scholarship funds, according to Bubenik's column.

Kai USA has not announced further expansion plans. The city's next updated economic opportunity analysis is expected in 2027.