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By Robert Trellis
Japanese automakers Toyota and Honda have extended the shutdown of their plants in Japan as the country’s worked to recover from the earthquake and tsunami that hit the tiny Asian nation on March 11. Toyota is biggest car producer in the world. The Japanese firm announced today said that production at its plant would remain suspended until Saturday March 26. Earlier, the company had announced that the production would remain stopped until the end of Tuesday. Toyota did not announce that when the production will resume at its 27 plants in Japan.
The company however, resumed production of spare parts on Monday to serve its overseas operations. The company said that the extended halt could delay imports of some of its models, including the Prius hybrid model, RAV4 small sport utility vehicle, Land Cruiser four-by-four, iQ city car and Lexus luxury vehicles. “The longer the stop, the likelier it will be that we have some delays in deliveries”, a spokesman said.
Honda had announced a shutdown of its plants until at least March 21. The company today announced that the operations at its plant would remain closed until March 27. The disaster has badly affected the Japan’s carmakers, who are left with the choice of either staying closed or resume production, but with a risk of running out of components.
Meanwhile, Nissan yesterday resumed limited operations at five of its six plants in Japan. The carmaker’s Oppama, Tochigi, Kyushu, Yokohama and Nissan Shatai plants yesterday started producing parts for overseas manufacturing and repair parts. Nissan is scheduled to resume vehicle production from March 24 “while inventory of supply lasts”.
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