Kentucky New Era Archive

May 12, 1999

By E. L. Gold

Construction Nears on Toyo Plant

The heavy-duty earthmovers rumbled to a stop today as company officials and local leaders donned white hard hats and used gold-colored shovels to break ceremonial ground for the Toyo Radiator plant in Commerce Park. 

Site preparation is already well under way at the new plant, which is slated to begin production next spring. 

Construction of the $10 million plant should begin as soon as the site is ready.  The building should be complete in about four months, with the remaining time scheduled for equipment installation, according to local economic development officials. 

The plant will employ about 96 full-time workers in a 90,000-square-foot building located  on 27 acres in the city's newest industrial park.  The company will manufacture aluminum radiators and oil coolers for cars and recreational vehicles. 

Toyo Radiator already has strong ties to Hopkinsville, a factor that apparently played a significant role in bringing the new plant to the city. 

The company owns CoPAR Industries, Inc., in the Hopkinsville Industrial Park.  The plant manufactures radiators for heavy off-road equipment and industrial use and is Toyo Radiator's only other U.S. facility. 

Shuji Hashimoto, president of Toyo Radiator, said the company decided to locate its second U.S. plant in Hopkinsville because of the support it has received from the community since the CoPAR plant opened in 1987. 

"Since that time, we have had some hard times," Hashimoto said at the ground breaking today.  "But we are confident we will have success in the future." 

The CoPAR factory has been expanded twice in the last two years, and company officials once looked at the old EMS-Togo/EFTEC building, across Bill Bryan Boulevard from the CoPAR plant, as an expansion site. 

In fact, CoPAR sought and won approval for a $1.5 million tax credit in September 1998 to buy the building.  However, that plan was scrapped in favor of building the new Toyo Radiator factory. 

The company won approval in February for $1.3 million in state tax incentives to build the new plant, and drew high praise from Gov. Paul Patton when the tax incentives were announced. 

The governor called it "another example of Kentucky's strong business relationship with Japan." 

While it has only the Hopkinsville plants in the United States, Toyo Radiator has four factories and 1,600 employees in Japan and also has plants in Thailand, China, Indonesia, and Taiwan.  The company is working on a major joint venture in India to produce radiators for that country's massive automobile industry.