The “COVID-19” rife: Japan’s domestic car production drops in March against previous year, casting a cloud over aluminium demand

The Japanese domestic car production in March’20 has declined against a year earlier, squeezed by sluggish global and domestic sales due to the impact of the Covid-19 rife.

The domestic production of the country's eight-car manufacturers has shown drop by 8% against the preceding year to around 791,000 in March. The March output showed an 8% recovery from February when China's strict quarantine measures against Covid-19 disrupted supplies of auto parts.

Large production drop has been declared by Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, and Honda, as they pressed down the country's overall car output in March. Smaller producers Daihatsu, Subaru, and Mitsubishi all increased their March output by 10-14% each from the previous year, whereas Suzuki posted steady output in March.

Japan's domestic car sales recorded fall by 24% from the previous year to 485,207 in March.

Toyota reduced domestic car output by 13% from a year earlier to around 279,000 in March. Toyota has been forced to cut domestic car output in response to a sharp fall in global car sales amid the coronavirus. The company’s global car sales in March also showed a drop of 24% from a year earlier to around 682,000.

Domestic car production is projected to fall significantly in April and May as all the eight-car producers have plans to intermittently halt production lines at domestic assembly plants, in the wake of the sluggish car sales and under the country's Covid-19 state of emergency effective until 6^th May’20.

The falling domestic car output is taking its toll on Japanese demand for metals products. The sluggish car output is also casting a cloud over the Japanese production of aluminium products in the current 2019-20 fiscal year.