Toyota to suspend production in Turkey for two weeks

As the spread of the coronavirus has accelerated, Toyota has decided to suspend production in Turkey at the end of this month, S&P Global Platts learned Wednesday.

“Within the scope of Turkish Health Ministry’s advice, to protect our workers’ health, we decided to suspend production at our plant in Sakarya for two weeks from March 21 till April 5,” the company said in a statement.

Toyota Turkey is one of Toyota’s largest automotive plants in Europe with a production capacity of 280,000 units/year.

Due to interruptions in production facilities abroad, another large Turkish automotive producer, Ford Otosan, also suspended production at its 455,000 units/year plant in Kocaeli from March 30 till April 4, as Platts has reported.

After falling to the lowest level of the last 16 years in 2019, the Turkish Automotive Manufacturers’ Association was expecting 2020 to be a normalization year.

However, the coronavirus outbreak could harm these expectations, if the outbreak is not brought under control soon.

— Cenk Can