Subaru Corporation (FUJHY 0.17%) today announced the planned suspension of all Japanese operations after having already temporarily closed its U.S. facilities. This is just the latest auto industry announcement related to plant closures due to the impacts from the spread of COVID-19.
On Tuesday, Ford Motor Company (F +0.43%) said that it would delay plans to restart its shuttered North American factories. It had aimed to reopen them starting with a Mexican assembly plant on April 6, 2020, and several U.S. facilities on April 14, 2020. The company now says those dates are postponed until further notice for the safety of its workforce and other stakeholders.
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Supply chain and demand
Subaru had already announced the closure of its U.S. plant in Indiana through April 6, 2020. It now plans to reopen that plant on April 20, 2020. The Japanese factories will all be shut down on April 11, 2020, with a restart date planned one month later.
The company specified that the new, and extended, suspensions of production are due to interruptions in the supply chain as well as "a rapid decline in demand around the world," due to the impacts from the spread of and attempts to mitigate the coronavirus.
Other automaker facilities in the U.S. that have suspended operations are being used to help build needed medical equipment to fight the pandemic. Ford and General Motors (GM +0.37%) have both announced these initiatives recently.
