Toyota Motor Corp. and its affiliate Toyoda Automatic Loom Works Ltd. agreed Monday to integrate their logistics and forklift divisions in April 2001, the two firms said.

Under the agreement, which is intended to consolidate its group strategies, Toyota will hand over its sales operations for forklifts and other industrial as well as consultative businesses for materials-handling systems to TALW, they said.

The products, however, will continue to be sold under the Toyota brand, they said.

At the same time, some 290 employees at Toyota will be transferred to the loom maker.

Since entering the forklift market in 1956, Toyota has been marketing forklifts and logistics equipment developed and built by TALW, such as automated storage and retrieval systems and automatic guided vehicles. Toyota has a 24.67 percent stake in the loom maker.

Tadaaki Jagawa, an executive vice president at Toyota, said the integration of the businesses will help the loom maker survive the intensifying competition in the international forklift market.

About 68,000 Toyota-brand forklifts were marketed worldwide during fiscal 1999, which ended March 31, 2000.

Pointing to the acquisition in June of BT Industries AB, a Swedish industrial vehicle maker, TALW vice chairman Akira Yokoi said his firm now aims to achieve a 24 percent share in the global forklift market. The Swedish firm sold 48,000 forklifts last year.

Unit stake increased

NAGOYA (Kyodo) Toyota Motor Corp. announced Monday it will turn its British sales unit, Toyota GB PLC, into a wholly owned subsidiary in September after buying a 49 percent equity stake held by Inchcape PLC.

Toyota said the purchase will be made in line with an agreement it made with Inchcape, an independent auto dealer based in Britain.

Toyota GB was established in 1967 and employs 477 workers. It sold 91,000 Corolla, Avensis and other cars in fiscal 1999.