TOKYO – A fire in a factory of one of the world’s leading manufacturers of automatic chips has contributed to the problems of car manufacturers who have already reduced production due to a shortage of semiconductors.
The fire on Friday left a series of charred equipment in the factory owned by a subsidiary of Renesas Electronics Corp. in Hitachinaka, northeast of Tokyo. The company said it would take at least a month to resume the damaged operations.
The shares of the three leading car manufacturers in Japan, Toyota Motor Corp, Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co., fell more than 3% on Monday, worse than the overall market, while Renesas’ shares fell 4.9%.
Renesas said heat from an electrical problem in a single piece of equipment caused the fire and contaminated clean rooms needed to make semiconductors. It is said that two thirds of the chips made in the factory affected by the fire are chips for cars.
Hidetoshi Shibata, CEO of Renesas, said on Sunday that the impact on global chip supplies would be significant. Mariko Semetko, a credit analyst at Moody’s Japan, said the fire was likely to dampen the recovery of global car production this year, while carmakers said they were still assessing its impact.