Toyota Material Handling U.S.A., Inc. (TMHU) unveiled a new North American headquarters in Columbus, Ind. The new headquarters marks the final stage of a strategic initiative to align TMHU’s sales and marketing team with its manufacturing plant—Toyota Industrial Equipment Mfg., Inc. (TIEM).

The new North American headquarters represents a $4.6 million dollar investment, adding 21,400 square feet to the Toyota campus, which includes the manufacturing facility and national headquarters. The combined TMHU and TIEM campus now totals more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing and support space and houses more than 1,000 associates.

“Toyota made a commitment more than one year ago to align our teams under one roof to combine synergies and allow us to be even more responsive to customer and dealer needs,” says Jeff Rufener, president. “Today, we celebrate this partnership and set our sights on continued leadership in the market and support of our associates, dealers and customers.”

As the “lead plant” for Toyota’s Sao Paulo manufacturing facility, TIEM Indiana associates are responsible for training the Brazil plant leaders on production engineering, manufacturing, quality assurance and production control. Upon completion of the new facility, TIEM will be the first Toyota industrial manufacturing plant outside of Japan to supply parts to a Toyota Industries Corp. plant in another country and is expected to supply the Brazil plant with 31% of its forklift parts manufactured in Indiana.

When TIEM established its state-of-the-art, $60 million lift truck plant operations in 1990, the facility covered approximately 7 acres under one roof. Since then, TIEM has undergone 12 expansions. The zero land-fill campus now totals more than 1 million square feet of facilities sitting on 126 acres. Representing an investment of $117 million, the campus includes the new North American headquarters, National Customer Center, training center, manufacturing operations and distribution centers for equipment and service parts.