Thai flooding halts car production by all 9 Japanese automakers

The Thai floods “are now serious enough to have caused another set of ripples in the oh-so-intricate global supply chain. Mother Earth is in charge and she is still very disturbed.” -- MCR

Japan Today,

OCT. 21, 2011 - 12:00PM JST 

Flooding in Thailand has forced all nine Japanese automakers to halt manufacturing, cutting production by a total of 6,000 units a day, an industry leader said Friday.

Toshiyuki Shiga, chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, said all nine Japanese automakers operating in Thailand had halted production after the floods.

“As a whole, production of 6,000 units has been affected on a daily basis,” he told a news conference.

“Of the nine companies, which have halted plants, eight have done so because they could not procure parts sufficiently.”

Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi are among the Japanese companies which have stopped production in Thailand.

Shiga, who is also Nissan’s chief operating officer, said the parts makers were considering moving production elsewhere or shipping them in from other countries, including Japan.

According to his association, Japanese motor companies produced about 1.6 million units in Thailand last year.