Toyota Motor, Japan’s largest automaker, has decided to continue slashing its domestic output plans for November-December over the perennial shortage in auto components including IC-chips, market sources shared. Toyota has been lowering its monthly auto output plan for over a year now, Mysteel Global noted.
Toyota has informed its component suppliers that it plans to produce about 270,000 units with 23 days of operations at its domestic plants in November and about 280,000 units with 20 operating days in December, down by 13% and 3% respectively from the plan released by the company a month ago, according to sources.
“Toyota’s overall output at domestic plants has been improving slowly, but it’s still lowering its output plan every month, so we can’t finalize our operation schedule until the last minute,” a sales official from a coil center in central Japan lamented.
He added that Toyota planned to produce above 14,000 units/day in January 2023. “Such daily output (above 14,000 units/day) is high, but we really wonder if component deliveries will be improved for the company to operate at such a high level,” he said.
A flat steel trader in Tokyo observed that if Toyota could maintain over 14,000 units/day output from December and other automakers would also be able to lift their output, then Japan’s flat stocks may start to decrease, and steelmakers might be able to lift flat output sometime in the January-March quarter.
“Japanese automakers have backlog orders piled and they really need to lift production as early as possible to deliver orders in time. So their output will be lifted to higher levels once component deliveries are to become smoother. We believe Japanese integrated mills and special steel producers are under stress because they’ve been waiting to lift output,” he predicted.
Japan produced approximately 44.3 million tonnes of hot-rolled coils, cold-rolled coils and galvanized sheets over January-September, down 11.3% on year, Mysteel Global calculated based on the latest data from Japan Iron & Steel Federation.
Written by Yoko Manabe, yoko.manabe@mysteel.com
Edited by Zhenqi Yang, yangzhenqi@mysteel.com
Note: This article has been written in accordance with an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
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