Toyota Tsusho

Toyota established Toyoda Kinyu Kaisha (トヨタ金融株式會社) in 1936 to provide sales financing for Toyota cars. The dissolution of the Toyota zaibatsu in 1948 led to the trading division of Toyota Finance being spun off to a new company called Nisshin Tsusho Kaisha, Ltd. (日新通商株式会社) This company was renamed "Toyoda Tsusho" in 1956.

Toyota Tsusho began exports of Toyota cars in 1964, starting with exports to the Dominican Republic. By the 1980s it had expanded its business to include overseas production for the Toyota Group, and had established a second head office in Tokyo.

Toyota Tsusho merged with Kasho Company, Ltd. in 2000. Kasho was a trading company focused on the Southeast Asia markets and dealt in rubber, paper, food, chemicals and general merchandise.

Toyota Tsusho then acquired Tomen Corporation, another Japanese trading company, on April 1, 2006. This acquisition expanded Toyota Tsusho's food, textiles, chemicals and energy business and caused it to leapfrog Sojitz to become the sixth-largest general trading company in Japan. Tomen had been founded in 1920 as Toyo Menka Kaisha (東洋棉花株式會社) from the cotton trading business of Mitsui & Co. and was active in grain processing, power generation, agrochemicals and other business areas worldwide. These acquisitions together expanded Toyota Tsusho's business beyond its historical automotive focus.

In March 2016, Toyota Tsusho announced having reached a broad cooperation agreement with Bolloré Logistics, the logistics arm of the Bolloré French conglomerate, to "enhance and secure their foundation as Africa's number one position by the joint business development in various fields including infrastructure and logistics" (quote), both in Africa as well as globally.

In August 2018, Toyota Tsusho began a partnership with Microsoft to create fish farming tools using the Microsoft Azure application suite for IoT technologies related to water management. Developed in part by researchers from Kindai University, the water pump mechanisms use artificial intelligence to count the number of fish on a conveyor belt, analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from the data the fish provide. The specific computer programs used in the process fall under the Azure Machine Learning and the Azure IoT Hub platforms.

On November 14, 2022, OneH2, Inc. have partnership with Toyota Tsusho America, Inc on hydrogen fuel cell technologies.

Business sections

Toyota Tsusho's businesses are divided into 7 business sections:

Metals: The Metals Division views steel and non-ferrous metals as products with unique properties and functions rather than simple commodities. This approach allows us to provide optimal products and logistics matching the needs of both suppliers and users. The Division is composed of multiple strategic business units (SBUs), all of which manage both steel and non-ferrous products. This ensures that each SBU can respond to customer needs with proposals covering multiple types of metal products.

Global Parts & Logistics: The Global Parts & Logistics Division's network spans 38 nations, with 177 sites operated by 79 overseas subsidiaries and business entities. It has approximately 14,000 members worldwide.

Automotive: The Automotive Division exports passenger cars, commercial vehicles, trucks, buses, material handling machineries, motorcycles, and spare parts manufactured primarily by the Toyota Group in Japan to countries around the world, and also exports products manufactured outside Japan to other countries. The Division's global network covers 146 nations, with the Division having its own business management operations in 48 nations. (Including the vehicle business of the Africa Division, this total becomes 175 nations worldwide, with the Division having its own business management operations in 87 nations.)