TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Renesas Electronics, a leading automotive semiconductor supplier, said Sunday that production at a fire damage center will take at least a month to resume, which could be exacerbated by shortages chip that disrupts car production.
About two-thirds of production on the advanced 300mm wafer line on Friday’s fire is affecting automated chips, CEO Hidetoshi Shibata told an online message.
“It comes at a time when there is not much production capacity,” he said.
Motorists are already struggling with global chip shortages caused by the rise of COVID-19 led by consumer electronics and an unexpectedly strong reversal in car sales. Manufacturers like Ford Motor Co, Honda Motor Co and Nissan Motor Co have to cut production plans as a result.
Motorists will begin to feel a pinch of supply in about a month, according to Renesas.
The chipmaker said it is teaming up with automakers and their major suppliers to look for ways to reduce the impact of the halter, Shibata said.
A spokesman for Toyota Motor Corp said the world’s largest car dealer is assessing the situation.
The fire at the Naka chip plant in northeastern Japan destroyed 11 machines, or 2% of the manufacturing equipment, and sent smoke spraying through the clean room where even small particles of dust damaging wafers during the sensitive manufacturing process.
Renesas may not be able to replace the destroyed machines within a month, Shibata said, meaning a return to full production could take longer.
The company, he said, may be able to rely on other plants to replace about two-thirds of the lost production, which is worth about 17 billion yen ($ 156 million) per month.
The latest disturbance of the Naka plants comes after production stopped for a few days last month after a power earthquake cut off and backup generators failed.
In 2011, Renesas was forced to close the facility for three months after the deadly earthquake that devastated Japan’s northeast coast.
($ 1 = 108.8700 yen)
Reciting with Tim Kelly and Makiko Yamazaki; Edited by William Mallard and Kim Coghill