Toyota Awards Foundation Contract to Local Firm

ERLANGER, Ky., Aug. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Toyota announced today that it has awarded two construction contracts for its new Highlander vehicle assembly plant in Blue Springs, Mississippi.

Harrell Contracting Group, based in Ridgeland, Madison County, has formed a partnership with Homewood, Illinois-based Graycor Industrial Contractors Inc., for the foundation project for the plant's stamping and paint buildings. Work for his project will begin in September. Harrell employs 150 people in the state of Mississippi.

"We continue to receive many competitive bids from Mississippi companies and are thrilled to see such high interest in doing business with Toyota," said Jeff Caldwell, Assistant General Manager of Production Engineering at Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc. "Great progress has been made at the Blue Springs site and we're confident that we'll remain on schedule, but we still have many challenges ahead of us."

Toyota also selected Midwest Steel, Inc. of Detroit, Michigan, for the structural steel project for the plant's stamping and paint buildings. This project will coincide with the foundation project in September.

Site preparation will continue through this fall and Toyota will select general contractors for the project in October. At peak construction in summer 2008, approximately 2,000 workers will be on site and the majority of them will be from the local area.

In February, Toyota announced that it had chosen a 1,700-acre site in Blue Springs to build 150,000 Toyota Highlander SUVs annually. The new plant represents a $1.3 billion investment by Toyota that is expected to hire around 2,000 team members. Vehicle production is scheduled to start by 2010.

Contractors, subcontractors and vendors interested in doing business at TMMMS can visit http://www.toyotasupplier.com/.

About Toyota

Toyota established operations in North America in 1957 and will operate 15 manufacturing plants in North America by 2010. There are more than 1,700 Toyota, Lexus and Scion dealerships in North America which sold more than 2.8 million vehicles in 2006. Toyota directly employs over 41,000 in North America and its investment here is currently valued at more than $18.6 billion, including sales and manufacturing operations, research and development, financial services and design. Toyota's annual purchasing of parts, materials, goods and services from North American suppliers totals more than $28.5 billion.

Toyota currently produces 11 vehicles in North America, including the Avalon, Camry, Camry Hybrid, Corolla, Matrix, Sienna, Solara, Sequoia, Tacoma, Tundra and the Lexus RX 350. By 2010, Toyota will have the annual capacity to build approximately 2.2 million cars and trucks, 1.45 million engines and 600,000 automatic transmissions. For more information about Toyota, visit http://www.toyota.com/.