Thursday, 20 October 2011 at 10:11, Reuters, Tokyo
Japanese car production in Thailand has been disrupted by floodings. (REUTERS)
The output of Japanese automakers is down by about 6,000 units a day due to extensive flooding in Thailand, the head of an industry body said on Thursday.
The natural disaster, that has echoes of the supply chain disruption caused by Japan's earthquake and tsunami, has impacted a raft of Japanese firms.
Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association Chairman Toshiyuki Shiga, who is also Chief Operating Officer for Nissan Motor Co, told reporters he could not say when production would be restored at Japanese plants in Thailand.
The floods are expected to cause Thailand's auto sector, the biggest in Southeast Asia, to miss its output target of 1.8 million units this year, an executive at Honda Motor Co said earlier this week.
Some of the flood-hit manufacturers at five industrial estates in Thailand's central Ayutthaya province could be up and running again from the middle of December, a local official said on Wednesday.
Honda said earlier it expects to resume operations at its plant in the Rojana industrial estate a month after floodwater is drained from the complex, which was forced to shut on October 6.
Flooding in the north, northeast and centre of the country has killed over 300 people since July and devastated the low-lying Ayutthaya, Pathum Thani and Nakhon Sawan provinces north of Bangkok.
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