BookTitleToyota Tsusho 70-Year History

Summary

Toyota Tsusho 70-Year History

in 1998 and established Toyota East Africa at a 50:50investment ratio in 1999 with Lonrho to be Toyota’sregional management company in Uganda and Kenya.In the 10 years from the early 1990s until the early2000s, political instability in African countries causeda severe decline in the regional economy, and manyJapanese companies significantly reduced their Japaneserepresentatives or closed their offices. But it was atprecisely this time that Toyota Tsusho aimed to steadilyexpand its business, especially in Southeast Africa, andthe difference in strategy turned out to be extraordinary.Lonrho suffered significant losses in its Africa businessunit and decided to sell all its operations in Africa exceptits mining business. Toyota Tsusho saw this as a hugeopportunity and purchased Toyota distributorships stockfrom Lonrho in six countries: Kenya, Uganda, Angola,Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi and acquired the restof the local capital stock at the same time, garneringwholly owned Toyota distributorships subsidiaries in sixcountries of Southeast Africa in March 2001.As a part of its African business enhancements, ToyotaTsusho Africa (Pty) Ltd. was established in October1999 to be a centralized African hub of operations inJohannesburg, South Africa. Its main functions wouldbe to manage subsidiary distributorships, supportdealerships where the duties were transferred, and buildsystems for regional centralized inventory for vehiclesand genuine parts. Toyota Tsusho’s Durban Office hadbeen delivering a part of production materials andseveral component parts mostly steel sheet to ToyotaSouth Africa Motors (Pty) Ltd., but in response toTMC’s capital participation in Toyota South Africa, theglobalization of production bases and plans, and thesignificant expansion of production capacity from 80,000units to 220,000 units, Toyota Tsusho Africa relocatedits headquarters to Durban in 2006. Since that time, anew Production Support Department has been set up inDurban to carry out comprehensive production-relatedtasks, and a headquarters building has been constructed tocarry out the functions of the complex and sophisticateddistribution center on the 60,000-square-meter groundsinside an industrial park in close proximity to ToyotaSouth Africa. This ensured that Toyota Tsusho couldfully expand its Toyota production peripheral businesses,as had been demonstrated in the Americas, Asia, andEurope, attract and invite Japanese parts manufacturers,withitstechnoparkfunctionsinDurban.2 Signing a MOU with the KenyanGovernmentThe height of the company’s presence in Africa wasrepresented in August 2012, when a memorandumof understanding (MOU) was concluded with thegovernment of Kenya. The parties to the MOU promisedto mutually cooperate in comprehensive businesscreation in five fields toward achieving the Kenya Vision2030 released by the Kenyan government: automobiles,electric power and energy, petroleum and mineralresources, environmental conservation, and agricultureand industrialization. Accordingly, in November of thatyear, the Nairobi Office was made a subsidiary companywhose aim was to develop a wide range of infrastructure,energy and agriculture businesses in addition to themobility business. This allowed the relationship betweenShopping center PLAYCE in Cote d’Ivoire,History149