Three months after the devastating March 11 earthquake, Japan's automobile and electronics industries are getting back on their feet.
Three months after the devastating March 11 earthquake, Japan's automobile and electronics industries are getting back on their feet.
Some other companies will relocate production overseas after their plants were hit by the rotating blackouts imposed due to the problems at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
This month, Toyota Motor Corp.'s and Nissan Motor Co.'s domestic production has recovered to almost pre-disaster levels.
Honda Motor Co., meanwhile, is scheduled to return to normal production levels by August, putting furloughed workers back on assembly lines. Automakers hope to catch up on lost production in the latter half of the current fiscal year and increase exports.
The electronics industry is also bucking initially pessimistic predictions.
Renesas Electronics Corp., the world's largest supplier of automotive microcontrollers, said June 10 that production at its main plant in Ibaraki Prefecture will return to pre-quake levels at the end of September, a month ahead of schedule.
Sony Corp. partially resumed production of Blu-ray discs and other items May 30 at its subsidiary in Miyagi Prefecture.
However, the pace of recovery has varied in other industries.
Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. on May 20 reopened its Kashima Works, which accounts for more than 10 percent of the domestic production capacity of ethylene, a basic petrochemical. The move has helped to increase shipments of "natto," or fermented soybeans, which had been stalled because the plastic film used in the packaging is made from ethylene derivatives.
The drinks industry has had mixed success in returning to pre-quake production. While supplies of beverage cans, which fell to about 20 percent after the quake, have almost recovered, only one major beer manufacturer has reopened a plant that was closed after the quake.
Sapporo Breweries Ltd. reopened its Sendai plant in May, but Kirin Brewery Co. will only restart production at its plant in the same city in the autumn, and Asahi Breweries Ltd. has postponed the reopening of its Fukushima plant by about three months from the initially scheduled June.
In the paper industry, Mitsubishi Paper Mills Ltd. partially restarted operations at its main plant in Aomori Prefecture in late May, but a full recovery is not expected until later this year.
Nippon Paper Industries Co. will not be able to restart production at its mill in Miyagi Prefecture until the end of September.
Some companies are relocating production abroad so that electricity shortages caused by the nuclear incident will not affect supplies of key products.
Hoya Corp., which holds an 80 percent share of the global market for mask blanks, or the master plates used in semiconductor production, plans to build a second plant overseas.
Production fell at its plant in Yamanashi Prefecture after Tokyo Electric Power Co. introduced rotating blackouts.
"We concluded that we needed an overseas production base to reassure our foreign customers," a spokesperson said.
Mitsui Mining and Smelting Co. controls more than 90 percent of the global market for ultra-thin copper foils, which are used in microchips for smartphones.
The company plans to install an auxiliary assembly line at a Malaysian subsidiary by April because rotating blackouts forced production to be suspended at its plant in Saitama Prefecture.