Toyota truck bed supplier celebrates opening Seguin facility with ribbon cutting

Felicia Frazar The Seguin Gazette

With the snip of a very long ribbon, Teijin Automotive Technologies on Tuesday officially celebrated the opening of the 200,000-square-foot Seguin facility that will churn out pickup truck beds for San Antonio’s Toyota plant.

“A lot of hard work went into creating what you see here today,” Steve Rooney, CEO of Teijin Automotive Technologies, said. “It is truly quite fascinating if you watch the progress of digging a hole in the ground to putting pieces of sophisticated automation equipment in.”

Dignitaries from the company joined city and state officials in celebrating the milestone — a celebration that was delayed because of COVID restrictions.

Teijin — which is headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan — broke ground on Oct. 1, 2019, in an empty field at 2050 Eighth St. next to Rio Nogales Power Plant. Construction was completed in the summer of 2020 and production began in the fall of 2021.

“Along with the parent company, Teijin, we have invested more than $65 million on this state-of-the-art facility,” said Bruno Santillan, Teijin Automotive Technologies plant manager of the Seguin facility. “Today, we have over 200 employees working on a three-shift pattern.”

The new, state-of-the-art facility manufactures compression molding and sports the largest compression molding press — 5,200 tons — west of the Mississippi in the United States.

“This is an incredible feat and we look forward to seeing all that Teijin Technologies will continue to achieve,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a video message for the ceremony.

In addition to celebrating the opening of the facility, Tomo Likubo, general manager for purchasing for Toyota, announced the Seguin manufacturing plant is supplying truck beds to the company.

For more than 15 years, Teijin’s manufacturing facility in Tijuana, Mexico, has produced truck beds for the Toyota Tacoma. Now the company will expand that partnership, Likubo said.

“I’m pleased to continue to cultivate this relationship here in Seguin providing truck beds for our all new, beautiful Tundra that is built close by in San Antonio,” he said. “The perseverance and the unwavering determination to succeed exemplified by the Teijin team gives me great confidence for our mutual success going forward.”

The compression molding presses are set up to create three lengths of pickup boxes 5-foot, 5-inch; 6-foot, 5-inch; and 8-foot, 1-inch.

“We’ve been open and operating for a while,” Santillan said. “We have shipped over 56,000 units to our customer.”

The Seguin plant is Teijin’s first new manufacturing facility in North America since building the Tijuana facility more than 15 years ago, Rooney said. However, it joins 12 other facilities in the U.S., and 16 in seven countries.

“Our other growth has really come through some small acquisition and expansions of existing facilities around North America,” Rooney said. “We’ve had quite a bit of growth, but have always expanded in existing communities. This is the first time we’ve been able to have this great opportunity to build a brand new facility and implement the type of technology into a manufacturing system that really allows us to build high-quality products.”

Rooney thanked the state, county and city officials for helping making the new plant a reality.

“Without all of your help, this would not have happened today. We wouldn’t have been able to pull this off,” he said. “Many of these people (here in attendance), along with others from the governor’s office, and folks at the city and county level really made it possible for us to select Seguin, Texas, for this location. They helped us purchase land, build on that land and assist in our efforts to attract high-quality, skilled, local workers.”

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini presented Rooney a flag that flew over the state capitol on the day of the groundbreaking and officially welcomed the company to Texas.

“What a great impact on this community,” she said. “What a wonderful impact on our great state. In fact, this has local implications born right here in Seguin because of this impressive company and because of the economic development team, our leaders from the state, our leaders from the city and our leaders from the county.”

Seguin Mayor Donna Dodgen said she was impressed with the city’s newest corporate resident.

 “I wanted to tell you that this is a wonderful company,” she said. “They’ve done a ton for our community and we are just blessed to have them. We so appreciate having Teijin here. I want to thank you so much for being here and I want to thank you so much for being part of the community.”

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