Toyota halts production at nine plants after Earthquake

Toyota Motor Corp. said it will suspend production at nine plants in Japan this week because of supply disruptions from a weekend earthquake that rattled the country’s northeast.

The suspension begins as early as Wednesday and affects half of Toyota’s 28 lines at nine factories nationwide; including subsidiaries such as Hino Motors.

Toyota also declined to say how many units of output would be lost. The suspensions start as early as Feb. 17 at some plants and run through Saturday, February 20, at all the affected lines. Toyota is still considering when to resume operation after that.

While the earthquake had no significant impact on Toyota’s factories, it affected some of the automaker’s suppliers, causing a delay in parts supply, a spokesman said.

Toyota said; the supply chain issues were not expected to affect overseas production.

The downtime hits 14 of the carmaker’s 28 lines in Japan and such nameplates like the Toyota RAV4, C-HR, and Harrier crossovers, and several Lexus models. Affected Lexus vehicles include the LS and IS sedans, the RC and LC coupes, as well as the LX, NX, UX, and RX crossovers and SUVs.

Renesas Electronics, a key supplier of automotive semiconductors, said on Monday that it restarted wafer production at a facility that was shut down for safety checks after the quake. But it said the plant won’t ramp-up to full pre-earthquake production until next week.

Other big Japanese automakers have no plans to adjust output over the Saturday quake. Nissan Motor’s engine factory in Fukushima did not suffer damage. Mazda Motor also said it has no plans to reduce output due to damage at suppliers.

Honda Motor, Suzuki Motor, Mitsubishi Motors, and Subaru plan to continue production as usual as well.

The 7.3 magnitude temblor struck off Japan’s northeast coast near the epicenter of the devastating Tohoku earthquake; that hit 10 years earlier. The quake injured some 160 people and caused blackouts to nearly 1 million households.