Bolstered by an aggressive array of incentives, Los Angeles coffee distributor Farmer Bros. Co. is moving to north Texas, becoming the latest company to flee the high cost of doing business in California.

Farmer Bros. chose the small town of Northlake in Denton County, part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, over another offer from Oklahoma City. An array of state and local tax incentives – including especially steep reductions in property taxes – received final approvals last week.

“We are extremely pleased with the support and assistance of the town of Northlake and Denton County,” said Farmer Bros. Chief Executive Mike Keown in a statement announcing the move.

Farmer Bros., started in 1912 as a door-to-door sales business, is one of the oldest publicly traded firms in Los Angeles County. The company announced in February that it would lay off up to 350 employees and leave California, estimating a move to either Texas or Oklahoma would save it as much as $15 million a year in operating costs. Also, proceeds from the sale of its Los Angeles land near the Torrance border would help offset the estimated $80 million cost of the move.

What’s more, locating in either Texas or Oklahoma would give the company a more central location for national distribution of its coffee and other products.

Such moves to more central geographic locations by commodity and manufacturing companies are becoming increasingly common, according to Los Angeles economic development consultant Larry Kosmont.

“Companies are picking locations that are very central geographically in the U.S., especially ones that are shipping intensive,” Kosmont said. “It saves on logistics costs.”

What appeared to sway Farmer Bros. in its choice of Northlake over Oklahoma City were the incentive packages offered by the town, the county and the state of Texas. While full details of the packages were not disclosed, documents from both Northlake and Denton County indicate the incentives are substantial.

Texas has no income tax, but its property taxes tend to be high. However, the package from Northlake, population 1,800, gives property tax discounts ranging from 75 percent to 85 percent for the next 10 years to Farmer Bros. and to the developer of the property where the coffee roaster’s facility is to be built.

The county is also giving the companies a 60 percent property tax break for 10 years.

Kosmont said those are big discounts, ones companies in California aren’t likely to see.

“These are aggressive splits, with very high ratios going back to the company and the property owner,” he said. “You generally don’t see anything like those splits here in California.”

Farmer Bros. will also get assistance from the Texas Economic Development Bank and the Texas Enterprise Zone program. The bank offers loans to companies with fewer than 500 employees in the state and also arranges low-interest loans with commercial banks, while the enterprise zone program offers tax credits based on the number of jobs an expansion or relocation project creates.

Taken together, Kosmont said it’s an impressive package.

“Texas had multiple levels of assistance available to create a fully-loaded incentive package,” he said. “It would be tough for any state to match the splits and the multiple levels of incentives that Texas offered in this case.”

Farmer Bros. spokesman Mark Nelson did not return calls seeking comment on the incentive packages and the relocation decision. The company might have more to say on the matter in its earnings release and conference call, scheduled for May 7.

Kosmont said Farmer Bros.’ strategy of first announcing a move out of California and then deciding on the exact site later is becoming more common, especially for logistics oriented companies that own facilities and property in this state and that are looking to rein in costs.

While it might seem counterintuitive for companies that own their facilities and property to want to give all that up and invest elsewhere, Kosmont said owning property might work against the drive to cut costs.

“If you lease property, you can use the threat of moving to work a better deal with the landlord, so you can save costs,” he said. “But if you own the building or property already, you can’t really cut costs on that front. So other factors, like central geographic locations for shipping, become even more important.”

Also, with land so expensive in Southern California, a company that owns land here can sell that property, buy cheaper land elsewhere and have money left over. Farmer Bros. has said it expects to generate roughly $30 million from the sale of its Los Angeles property, and that money that will be used to offset the cost of building a new, more efficient facility in Northlake.

“It’s like selling a house in Beverly Hills or Malibu and buying a house in Indian Wells (in the Coachella Valley),” Kosmont said.