Toyota Motor is poised to temporarily halt production lines at its plant in Tianjin, northern China in the week commencing 22 October, due to weak demand for its cars in the country.
According to a Reuters report, citing a Nikkei story, the OEM plans to halve its overall October output in China compared with a year earlier, and may make deeper cuts in the coming months.
Two of the Tianjin plant’s three lines will reportedly be idled for one week starting 22 October, affecting output of sedans such as the Crown and the Reiz. The third line, which makes models such as the Vios subcompact, will be halted for two days, on 22 October and 26 October.
The Nikkei noted the Tianjin plant produced 500,000 cars in 2011.
Demand for Japanese vehicles in China continues to be undermined by anti-Japanese sentiment resulting from Japan’s nationalisation of two of a group of disputed East China Sea islands, known as the Diaoyu in Chinese and the Senkaku in Japanese, by purchasing them from their private owners.
In September, Toyota’s sales in China fell 48.9% year-on-year.
The Nikkei has previously reported that Toyota, Nissan and Honda all plan to cut production in China by roughly half in October.
On a slightly brighter note, Hiroto Saikawa, Executive Vice President of Nissan, told media representatives at a meeting at the OEM’s headquarters in Yokohama on 15 October that Nissan’s sales in China are “improving day by day” after they plummeted 34.6% in September from a year earlier. Nissan has the highest exposure to China among Japanese OEMs, its sales in the country accounting for about 27% of total sales in 2011.
