“Queen Sapphire/WWL” delivering Toyota and Lexus vehicles from Japan at Zeebrugge, Belgium.
An explosion that occurred last month at an Aichi Steel Corporation manufacturing facility has resulted in Toyota Motor Corporation stopping all production on its vehicle assembly lines within Japan from 8 February through 13. Vehicle production on lines outside Japan will continue in operation. What this means to the global sales race for Number One with GM and VW is not clear.
In addition, production at all of TMC’s directly owned and operated plants within Japan, including those producing components and parts, will also be suspended for the duration of February 8, which will be counted as a holiday.
At the moment manufacturing is scheduled to resume on 15 February. Toyota in a statement said it would continue to “take any measures necessary to minimize the impact of this incident on vehicle production.”
This means that Toyota might use alternate lines operated by Aichi Steel and buy from other steelmakers – heresy for a Japanese automaker to abandon a member of its keiretsu.
