TOKYO – A fire at a factory of one of the world’s leading auto chip makers has exacerbated the problems of automakers who have already cut production due to a shortage of semiconductors.
The fire left a piece of charred equipment at the factory owned by a subsidiary of Renesas Electronics Corp. on Friday. in Hitachinaka, northeast of Tokyo. The company said it would take at least a month to restart the damaged operations.
The shares of Japan’s three largest automakers – Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. – all fell more than 3% Monday, worse than the overall market, while Renesas shares fell 4.9%.
Renesas said the heat from an electrical problem in a single device caused the fire and polluted the cleanrooms needed to make semiconductors. It said two-thirds of the chips made at the fire-stricken factory were automotive chips.
Renesas’ CEO, Hidetoshi Shibata, said on Sunday that the impact on global chip inventory would be significant. Mariko Semetko, a credit analyst at Moody’s Japan, said the fire was likely to dampen the global auto production recovery this year, while automakers said they were still assessing the impact.