Toyota restarting production in Japan following earthquakes; 80,000 vehicles lost

TOKYO, April 25 (UPI) -- Toyota on Monday resumed auto assembly line production at four Japanese manufacturing plants after a suspension following two recent earthquakes.

Strong earthquakes struck Japan's southwestern island of Kyushu on April 14 and April 16, killing nearly 50 people. Toyota suspended production in nearly all of its Japanese assembly lines following the earthquakes.

Toyota expects to lose about 80,000 units of production, including up to 4,000 deliveries to China due to disaster. The Japanese automaker manufactures about 42 percent of all products in Japan. Most plants will resume operations by Thursday, but other plants, including the Motomachi plant in central Japan and the Miyata plant near the earthquake impact zone, will remain closed.

Toyota said it has only calculated lost production and has not accounted for possible recuperation output in efforts to catch up. The company said it may ask union workers to work on holidays and weekends to decrease the deficit.

The earthquakes also disrupted manufacturing for other companies, including Sony, Nissan and Honda. Seismic activity is commonplace in Japan and much of the Asian Pacific Rim, which is positioned on the so-called geologic "Ring of Fire," where subterranean tectonic plates converge.