The past few months must have been nostalgic for Toyota South Africa, as the country’s market leader, became a 100 per cent subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation.

What started as a small distributor established by industrialist Dr. Albert Wessels, in 1961 has grown to the largest company of its type on the African continent. During this period it has always had a South African shareholding… until now.

Toyota Motor Corporation had increased its share to a majority in 2002, when it went from 39,3 per cent to 75 per cent, with the remaining 25 per cent held by Wesco, a listed company held 50,12 per cent by the Wessels family and with another 9 per cent in the hands of Mrs Elisabeth Bradley, who was chairman of Toyota SA.

Now TMC is paying R2,14 billion to Wesco for the outstanding 25 per cent and this will mean the end of any South African interest in this global industry leader. Toyota SA’s President and CEO, Dr Johan van Zyl, says there will be no changes in the way the company operates as it has been a Toyota-controlled subsidiary since 2002.

This will mean that none of the motor manufacturers in South Africa now have any local shareholding, which also means that their financial results will not be published. Up until now it was possible to find out how Toyota SA had fared when Wesco published its results, as in the end this company’s only asset was the share in Toyota SA.

For instance, this year it revealed that Toyota SA’s after tax profit had dropped by 600 per cent compared to the 2006/7 financial year. (Profit in these two periods had fallen from R286,8-million to R85,6-million).

This performance came despite Toyota SA having maintained its position as leader in overall vehicle sales in SA for the past 28 years and also having become the largest exporter of built-up vehicles.

However, Toyota ended its last half-year as partly SA owned by setting a new vehicle production benchmark for the country, with 94 500 vehicles coming off the assembly line at its Prospecton facility, near Durban. More than half of these – 56 700 units – were exported. Last October the company had set a monthly manufacturing record for a local facility when 16 894 units were produced.