TOYOTA WILL HALT ALL PRODUCTION IN JAPAN FOR ELEVEN DAYS

January 6th, 2009

Via: Reuters:

Toyota Motor Corp is to halt production at its Japanese plants for 11 days in February and March as a sharp slide in U.S. sales has left dealers’ lots full of unsold cars.

A 37 percent slump in December sales in Toyota’s biggest market was its sharpest fall in more than a quarter of a century and worse than declines at struggling U.S. rivals General Motors and Ford Motor.

“I never expected the crisis to spread this fast and leave this deep a scar,” Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe told reporters at a Tokyo event hosted by Japan’s top business lobbies.

Toyota had already announced a three-day production halt for this month at its 12 directly operated Japanese plants — four car assembly plants and eight for engines, transmissions and other components.

A sweeping suspension of domestic production is almost unprecedented. In 1993, Toyota halted output for one day as a strong yen hammered sales.

Japanese-built cars make up around 40 percent of Toyota’s sales in the United States, where foreign-made cars and trucks have been piling up at ports and dealers’ yards.

Automakers everywhere are cutting back production as consumers, hit by tight credit, shy away from big-ticket purchases even as companies dangle generous sales incentives.

Domestic rivals Honda Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co have both cut output plans by at least 200,000 vehicles for the year to end-March, and analysts expect further adjustments in January-March.

Toyota does not disclose the number of vehicles affected by production stoppages. Together, the four Japanese assembly plants built an average 130,000 vehicles a month in 2007, according to latest available data. Toyota plans to turn the 11 days in February and March into paid company holiday, a spokesman said.

One Response to “TOYOTA WILL HALT ALL PRODUCTION IN JAPAN FOR ELEVEN DAYS”

  1. tochigi says:

    this is MUCH more of a hard crash than what happened here in the 90s.

    yeah, life goes on for most people, but there are already huge villages of “temp-hired” factory workers (i.e. manufacturing workers hired on US-style no-benefits/instant layoff terms) who have lost there jobs springing up all over the country. after years of stable employment, with a lot also losing their place of residence which was often a company dorm. on the street, no money, no job, nothing. lots of Japanese and foreigners too (especially Brazillian-Japanese who are the backbone of the auto parts supplier workforce). And this is just the start. only a couple of months worth of layoffs so far. Wait till next autumn! gees, this could get dodgy really quickly…

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