Honda suspending production in Canada and U.S. plants

Honda Motor Co. announced early this week that it would be halting its production at its major plants in the U.S. and Canada. The company stated that the work suspension would last only a week.

Causes of the work disruptions

As per Reuters, the spokesperson for Honda revealed that the company would temporarily stop all production activities in the entire week starting March 22. The Japanese automaker cited chip shortage due to the unavoidable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was added that aside from this, the company was also affected by the severe weather and congestion at different ports. For these reasons, Honda was forced to suspend all the production works in some of its factories across North America.

The car manufacturer did not indicate the number of vehicle units impacted. However, it shared that the company’s production and purchasing teams are working to minimize the effect of the situation. The company added that the length of production adjustments could change, but the workers may still continue to work in Honda’s factories.

The list of affected plants

At any rate, Bloomberg reported that some of the Honda plants that will be closed for a week include the one in Marysville, Ohio, Indiana, Alabama, and Ontario, Canada. It is hoped that work suspension will only be for a week.

In 2020, Honda was able to churn out 1.45 million vehicle units in North America. Although this is a lot, the production rate was down by 20% compared to 2019’s record. The automaker has a total of 12 plants in the U.S. and one in Canada.

Vice president of vehicle forecasting company, AutoForecast Solutions, Sam Fiorani, stated that normally, Honda makes around 30,000 units per week. Thus, it is predicted that the company will lose this much sales for this number of vehicles.

Meanwhile, the chip shortage is still a big problem among automakers because, despite the efforts to boost the production of the much-needed chips to meet the demands worldwide, semiconductor companies are still not able to produce as much. In fact, Toyota Motor Corp is also temporarily halting its own production next week due to the same issues as with Honda.