Japan's automakers to restart production

 In doing so they will join rival Honda in resuming production, although all three have warned output will be at 50 per cent of usual levels.

Honda said on March 31 that it planned to restart all plants by April 11. All three companies will be producing vehicles by April 18. Japan’s leading automakers were forced to suspend production due to the impact of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, with crucial supply chains broken and power cuts prompting plants to be shuttered. Toyota will start operating its assembly plants from the morning shift of April 18 until April 27, a company spokesman said.

Plants will then become idle for the Golden Week holiday season, as they do every year, through May 10, a spokeswoman said, adding that no decision had been made on the post-Golden Week schedule. Rival Nissan said it would also resume production around the same time, beginning with the first plant on April 11. Toyota shares closed up 1.36 percent at 3,340 yen today. Nissan shares closed down 0.83 percent at 714 before it made the announcement. “When I visited dealers, vendors, and our own factories, I heard people’s desire to return to normal. That’s what pushed me to resume our operations,” Toyota President Akio Toyoda told reporters today.

“There are still issues with supplies of parts. But we will try to improve ourselves so that we can build as many vehicles as possible and deliver them to our customers,” he said. The restart plan comes as a boost to Toyota, which on Wednesday was threatened with a downgrade of its long-term credit rating by Moody’s.

Moody’s said it placed Toyota’s Aa2 rating — the third highest on a scale of 19 — on review for a possible downgrade, one month after Standard & Poor’s cut its rating on the automaker. The agency warned that Toyota’s production would not return to normal for “months”.