Toyota Material Handling USA Inc. is moving its North American headquarters from Irvine to Columbus, Ind., the company announced.

Toyota Material Handling, a division of Toyota Industries Corp. in Japan, sells fork lifts, pallet trucks, order pickers, and accessories and is the only maker of compressed natural gas powered lift trucks. It moved to Irvine in 2002.

Toyota Material Handling USA Inc. is moving its North American headquarters from Irvine to Indiana, the company announced. The Irvine facility will be closed over several years.

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Brett Wood, chairman of Toyota Material Handling USA and executive vice president of Toyota Material Handling North America, recently added the chief executive job in Columbus to his responsibilities.

Toyota Material Handling already has 53 employees in a million-square-foot facility on 126 acres in Columbus. That office is in the same location as Toyota Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Inc., a zero landfill manufacturing facility where the majority of Toyota lift trucks sold in North American are built.
The consolidation is part of a global restructuring for the parent company, which has already reorganized sales and marketing with manufacturing plants in Takahama, Japan, and Mjolby, Sweden.

Toyota Material Handling USA President Jeff Rufener said, "Bringing all TMHU associates under one roof will allow us to be more responsive to customer and dealer needs. Being on the Columbus campus with our forklift plant will result in more synergies and improved communications between sales and marketing and manufacturing."

The Irvine office, which has 72 employees, will be closed in phases beginning this fall, the company said.

The majority of Irvine workers are being offered the opportunity to relocate. Those who don't will receive severance pay and job placement assistance, the company said.

The company has more than 70 authorized Toyota Industrial Equipment dealers and more than 220 dealership locations throughout North America.