Tokyo  - Toyota Motor Corp plans to end its production contract with New United Motor Manufacturing Inc (NUMMI) at its plant in California at the end of March 2010 and shift the operations to the company's wholly-owned facilities, Japan's largest carmaker said Friday.

Toyota's first-ever closure of a plant came after US carmaker General Motors Co announced its withdrawal from the NUMMI joint venture.

"We have determined that over the mid- to long-term, it just would not be economically viable to continue the production contract with NUMMI. This is most unfortunate, and we deeply regret having to take this action," Toyota executive vice president for North America Atsushi Niimi said in a statement.

But Niimi added that the world's largest carmaker would continue production in North America and expected to bring back some of the production sometime in the future.

"NUMMI has been a groundbreaking model of Japan-US industry collaboration and we are proud of its achievements," he said.

Toyota plans to shift the California operations to San Antonio, Texas and Ontario, Canada as well as Japan.

The automaker earlier announced plans to reduce production capacity to reduce operating costs and return to the profit zone in the 2010 fiscal year which starts in April.

With NUMMI's closure, Toyota is to lose about 400,000 units from the 2-million-unit production capacity in North America. (dpa)