Toyota idles 11 production lines in Japan after explosion at coil supplier

Toyota Motor Corp. will partially suspend operations at seven plants in Japan through Wednesday night, expanding and extending an earlier decision to halt several facilities following a blast at a component supplier’s factory.

The explosion occurred Monday at Chuo Spring Co.’s factory in Aichi prefecture, where vehicle suspension coils are made for a number of Japanese carmakers. One employee was hospitalized and another treated for slight injuries, the supplier said Tuesday.

Toyota paused some manufacturing at six plants on Tuesday, then expanded the order to include 11 production lines across seven facilities, according to a spokesperson.

The move is Toyota’s biggest domestic production halt since August, when the automaker was forced to shut down all 14 of its domestic plants for a day due to a glitch in its manufacturing system.

Toyota declined to reveal how many production units will be affected because of the latest incident, but said it will decide later on Tuesday what happens next.

Toyota Auto Body’s Yoshiwara and Inabe plants as well as some production lines have been offline since Monday evening, while the Takaoka and Tsutsumi plants were stopped Tuesday morning.

In February 2022, Toyota had to shut all 14 of its domestic plants after one of its suppliers was subjected to a ransomware attack.

It took several days for operations to recover, and the incident impacted about 5 percent of Toyota’s output for the month.

Prior to that, the automaker saw shutdowns during the pandemic due to infections and supply-chain outages.

Reuters contributed to this report