Japan’s carmakers to resume production

Toyota, Honda and Nissan, Japan’s three biggest carmakers, plan to resume production at all their domestic assembly plants by April 18, more than a month after the country’s earthquake and tsunami damaged facilities and disrupted supplies of key components.

Overall production in Japan will remain at about half normal volume for all three manufacturers, however, highlighting the parts bottlenecks facing the industry.

Toyota, the world’s biggest carmaker by sales, said on Friday it would resume domestic production at all assembly plants on April 18 and continue until April 27 before reassessing its parts-supply status.

The company said it was still having some difficulty obtaining 150 different components, though that number was down from 500 components in the first weeks following the March 11 quake.

Domestic assembly at Toyota is presently on hold for all models except three hybrids, including the Prius, which are being built at a pair of factories in central and south-western Japan.

Nissan said two of its five Japanese assembly plants would resume production on Monday. Another two are to come back online on Wednesday, and the fifth plant will resume production on April 18.

Honda, which announced its production timetable on March 31, is to be the first to have all of its Japanese assembly plants back online. It plans to resume production on Monday at two factories, Saitama and Suzuka, that have been closed since the quake.

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“This means all Honda production plants in Japan will be in operation as of that date,” Takanobu Ito, president, said on Friday. “However, as the parts-supply situation remains fluid, production of component parts and vehicles in Japan will be at approximately 50 per cent of the original production plan for the time being.”

Nissan and Toyota also said their output would be half normal levels.

Honda’s research and development centre in Tochigi prefecture, in earthquake-hit northern Japan, is to remain closed. Satellite centres have been set up at factories across the country to continue development work, according to the company.

The north-eastern Tohoku region is home to several Japanese car-assembly plants and a large network of parts suppliers, making everything from brake pads to sheet steel for vehicle frames.

Many companies in the area supply customers throughout Japan and beyond. Renesas Electronics, for instance, claims a 40 per cent share of the world market for microcontrollers used in cars, but its damaged plant in Naka city, Ibaraki prefecture, is to be out of commission until July.