Toyota Material Handling Europe is integrating its Toyota and BT Rolatruc operations to enable it to offer both Toyota and BT products and services to customers through a single marketing and sales company.
Toyota has ambitious targets for its lift truck business – it wants to take 33 per cent of the entire world market.
The Toyota and BT brands will be retained – Toyota for counterbalance trucks and BT for warehouse trucks, but, for the first time, it will be able to offer a one-stop-shop for all the products in the range.
Toyota will be investing in additional resources to enable it to reach its objectives and it reckons it needs to recruit more than 200 additional sales and service staff throughout the UK to support this growth. It currently employs some 930 people.
The first step in the integration process in the UK will be the combination of the current activities of Toyota Industrial Equipment (UK) and BT Rolatruc into a new entity, Toyota Material Handling UK (TMHUK).
The new organisation will be led by Mike Mathias, managing director, and Steve Hodkinson, deputy managing director, supported by a senior management team drawn from the two existing companies. The new organisation is expected to become operational before the end of 2007.
