Milan, Feb 14 The domino effect of the disruption of the Chinese supply chain is spreading to Europe as Fiat Chrysler announced on Friday that it had temporarily halted production at its factory in Serbia over the availability of components sourced in China.
The impact of the Coronavirus outbreak has hit manufacturing globally. This is the first occasion that a European auto company has had to shut operations due to the epidemic.
The planned shutdown at the Kragujevac plant in Serbia has been rescheduled and production will restart later this month, a spokesman for the Italian-American automaker said.
This is not a good sign for the auto industry which till now has had to mainly deal with shutdowns in China itself. For the first time, auto companies are having to halt operations due to supply issues from China.
The Italian-American carmaker will reschedule planned downtime at its Kragujevac plant, a company spokesman said, citing "the availability of certain components sourced in China.
"Fiat is in the process of securing future supply of those affected parts and production will be restarted later this month," the spokesman said.
The halt to works at the Italy-based automaker's Kragujevac facility, which produces the Fiat 500L, is linked to a lack of audio-system and other electronic parts sourced from China.
Output at the plan totalled about 40,000 units last year, Serbian media reported, or a quarter of total capacity. Fiat doesn't expect the change in scheduling to impact the total production forecast for the month, the spokesman said.
( With inputs from IANS )