TOKYO: A fire at a factory of one of the world’s leading car chip makers has added to the problems of car manufacturers who have already reduced production due to the shortage of semiconductors.
Friday’s fire left a large amount of charred equipment at the factory owned by a subsidiary of Renesas Electronics Corp. in Hitachinaka, northeastern Tokyo. The company said it would take at least a month to restart the damaged operations.
The shares of the three major Japanese car manufacturers, Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co., fell more than 3% on Monday, worse than the global market, while Renesas shares fell 4.9%.
Renesas said the heat from an electrical problem inside a single piece of equipment caused the fire and polluted the clean rooms needed to make semiconductors. Two-thirds of the chips manufactured at the factory affected by the fire were said to be automotive chips.
Renesas chief executive Hidetoshi Shibata said Sunday that the impact on global chip supply would be significant. Mariko Semetko, a credit analyst at Moody’s Japan, said the fire is likely to dampen the recovery in global car production this year, while carmakers said they were still assessing the impact.