Ford will idle an F-Series pickup plant next week, as well as a facility in Belgium, due to shortages of Japanese-made parts.
Ford Motor Co. will be forced to idled a pickup truck plant in Louisville, KY next week due to a shortage of Japanese-made parts.
The announcement comes even as some Japanese assembly lines begin to roll again. Honda plans to resume production in its home market starting April 11, though because of the damage done to the Japanese parts supply network those plants will initially operate at only about half their rated capacity through at least April 15th.
The earthquake and tsunami of March 11th brought many Japanese suppliers to a grinding halt – though direct damage to assembly plants in Japan was relatively limited. But the subsequent problem with the Fukushima nuclear plant has complicated matters, forcing Japanese suppliers and automakers alike to curb production due to rolling blackouts that have spread across much of the country.
Automakers have so far loss several hundred thousand units of capacity in Japan alone, according to various analysts, Deutsche Bank estimating that all the Japanese automakers will now lose money during the first half of the fiscal year that began today.
“There’s no doubt financial results will be influenced by the earthquake,” Toyota President Akio Toyoda acknowledged during a meeting with reporters at the company’s headquarters in Toyota City, Japan, on Friday. “Ports, industrial complexes and roads are destroyed.”
But the impact is spreading beyond Japanese shores – and to most major automakers wherever they are based.
General Motors was the first to take a significant hit, briefly closing its truck plant in Shreveport, LA, while also cutting production at an upstate NY engine plant. They resumed operations this week but GM had to trim production at two European factories.
Ford initially felt the impact of the Japanese crisis in the paint booth, the maker telling dealers it would have to stop taking orders for vehicles in Tuxedo Black and several shades of red. Along with a number of other makers, Ford paints depend on pigments produced only in northeast Japan – the region of the country hardest hit by the natural disaster – by a subsidiary of German chemical company Merck.
The Ford plant in Louisville produced F-Series pickups as well as the maker’s Expedition and Lincoln Navigator models. Company officials declined to discuss what parts are now in short supply.
Ford also ordered a preventive shutdown, next week, at its plant in Genk, Belgium, due to potential parts shortages.
“Nobody’s immune. It’s affecting everybody,” Jim Hall, head of 2953 Analytics, told TheDetroitBureau.com.
The hardest hit, however, remain those manufacturers operating in Japan.
Toyota resumed production at three plants on March 24, putting an emphasis on high-demand hybrids. Another 16 home market plants are still shut, though CEO Toyoda said the goal is to get them back up as soon as possible.
Eventually, analysts estimate, as many as 500,000 units of Toyota production could be lost or delayed due to the natural disaster and subsequent energy crunch.
Nissan lost more than 50,000 units last month, according to various projections, but says it is now ready to resume production at all facilities except its Iwaki Engine Plant, which may require increasing production at a factory in Tennessee, which would see powerplants shipped back to Japan. Several Nissan lines are now running and the maker says it hopes to have all back online by mid-April.