Safariland, a company that manufactures a variety of gear for law enforcement agencies and the military, will lay off 158 employees at its Ontario factory and move production of its holsters to a plant in Florida, a company official said Monday, Dec. 10.

Safariland, which has operated in Ontario for 40 years, is cutting half its staff and transferring holster production to a factory it owns in Jacksonville, Fla. That plant, once owned by a rival of Safariland, uses injection molding, a high-tech manufacturing process, said Scott O’Brien, Safariland’s president.

Between 150 and 160 employees will continue working on East Mission Blvd. in Ontario, O’Brien said. Workers can ask to relocate to Florida, and those who don’t will be offered severance packages. “Technology has changed in the last few years, and injection molding is the way to go,” O’Brien said.”We bought a company in Florida that pioneered this process, and we’re simply transferring the work to Florida.”

The layoffs, effective at the end of the year, were reported on a California government website that tracks Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications, also known as the WARN Act. The law requires employers to inform the state of pending mass layoffs.

The Safariland Group makes numerous items that include belts, headgear, body armor and automotive accessories. In 2015, it purchased a controlling interest in Rogers Holster Co., the Jacksonville-based firm founded in 1973 by a former FBI agent. Rogers Holster’s items were used by public safety and military agencies around the world.

Injection molding is a high-volume process that pumps melted materials such as epoxy resins and other thermoplastics into product molds. While the up-front cost for establishing this process is high, once it is set up it allows a manufacturer to mass produce with little waste and reuse materials that otherwise would be discarded as scrap.

A previous version of this story identified the company’s president as Tim O’Brien. His name is Scott O’Brien.