TOKYO – A fire at a factory in one of the world’s largest automotive chip manufacturers has compounded the problems of automakers that have already reduced production due to a shortage of semiconductors.
Friday’s fire left a strip of carbonized equipment at 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 restart damaged operations.
Shares in the three largest Japanese automakers – Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. – fell more than 3% on Monday, worse than the general 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 contaminated the clean rooms needed to make semiconductors. The company said that two-thirds of the chips produced at the factory affected by the fire were automotive chips.
Renesas Chief Executive Hidetoshi Shibata said on Sunday that the impact on the global chip supply would be significant. Mariko Semetko, a credit analyst at Moody’s Japan, said the fire was likely to dampen the recovery in global automotive production this year, while automakers said they were still assessing the impact.