Toyota halts six auto plants after explosion at parts supplier

TOYOTA Motor suspended operations at six domestic plants following a blast at a factory run by one of its component suppliers.

The explosion occurred on Monday (Oct 16) at Chuo Spring’s factory in Aichi prefecture, where vehicle suspension coils are made for a number of Japanese carmakers. One employee was hospitalised and another was treated for slight injuries, the supplier said on Tuesday.

It’s the biggest domestic production halt since August when the world’s largest carmaker was forced to shut down all 14 of its domestic plants for a day due to a glitch in its manufacturing system. Toyota declined to reveal how many production units will be affected because of the latest incident but said it will decide later on Tuesday what happens next.

Toyota said operations at 10 manufacturing lines across six facilities in Japan will be halted. Toyota Auto Body’s Yoshiwara and Inabe plants as well as some production lines have been offline since Monday evening, while the Takaoka and Tsutsumi plants were stopped on Tuesday morning.

In February 2022, Toyota had to shut down all 14 of its domestic plants after one of its suppliers was subjected to a ransomware attack. It took several days for operations to recover, and the incident impacted about 5 per cent of Toyota’s output for the month. Prior to that, the carmaker saw shutdowns during the pandemic due to infections and supply chain outages. BLOOMBERG