Toyota Industries Corporation is a Japanese machine maker. Originally a manufacturer of automatic looms, it is the company from which Toyota Motor Corporation developed. It is the world's largest manufacturer of forklift trucks measured by revenues.
History
The company was founded in 1926 as Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, Ltd. by Sakichi Toyoda, the inventor of a series of manual and machine-powered looms. The most impressive of these was the 1924 Toyoda Automatic Loom, Type G, a completely automatic high-speed loom featuring the ability to change shuttles without stopping and dozens of other innovations. At the time it was the world's most advanced loom, delivering a dramatic improvement in quality and a twenty-fold increase in productivity. In 2007, this machine was registered as item No. 16 in the Mechanical Engineering Heritage of Japan as "a landmark achievement that advanced the global textile industry and laid the foundation for the development of the Toyota Group." In 1933, the company established its automobile department, led by Kiichiro Toyoda, the eldest son of Sakichi Toyoda. This department was spun off as Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. in 1937 and is now known as Toyota Motor Corporation. Toyota Industries is one of 13 core companies of the Toyota Group. The company owns 5.55% of Toyota Motor and is the largest shareholder. As a countermeasure against hostile merger and acquisition attempts, Toyota Motor currently holds 23.5% of common stock of its parent company Toyota Industries.
Current business
Toyota Industries is active in five business areas: automotive, materials handling, electronics, logistics, and textile machinery. Toyota-branded forklifts from Toyota Industries share the same logo as Toyota automobiles from Toyota Motor Corporation and are manufactured at the Toyota Industrial Equipment Manufacturing facility in Columbus, Indiana, for the US market. Toyota Industries Corporation is under contract from Toyota Motor Corporation for the production of the Toyota Vitz/Yaris and the Toyota RAV4. The company manufactures automotive engines for use in Toyota-brand automobiles such as Avensis, Corolla, Crown, and Land Cruiser. In 2000, Toyota Industries acquired the Swedish-based forklift truck corporation BT Industries, alongside BT's subsidiaries, U.S.-based The Raymond Corporation and the Italian CESAB. Combined with Toyota Industries' materials handling division, this created the largest forklift company in the world, Toyota Material Handling Corporation. In October 2012, Toyota Industries acquired Cascade Corp., a maker of attachments for forklifts, for a price of $728 million. In 2016, Toyota Industries acquired Vanderlande Corp. a manufacturer of automated material handling solutions as well as Bastian Solutions on the North American market
Investor information
The company's shares are traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange under symbol 6201.T.
