Steel Markets

Chrysler Plans Two-Week Outage at Illinois Plant on Chip Shortage

Written by David Schollaert

December 2, 2021

Stellantis – the Dutch parent company of Chrysler – will idle production for two weeks at one of its U.S. plants because of the ongoing global microchip shortage, a company spokeswoman said.

The Auburn Hills, Mich.-based automaker’s assembly plant in Belvidere, Ill., will be down starting the week of Dec. 6 and will remain down through the week of Dec. 13, she said.

AutoAssembly2“Stellantis continues to work closely with our suppliers to mitigate the manufacturing impacts caused by the various supply chain issues facing our industry,” the spokeswoman said in an email to Steel Market Update on Thursday, Dec. 2.

The is the second extended outage at Belvidere this quarter. The assembly plant, which makes the Jeep Cherokee SUV, was down for most of October because of the chip shortage.

There was little in the way of additional downtime to report at other automakers as of Thursday afternoon.

Case in point: General Motors – the largest U.S. automaker and Chrysler’s crosstown rival – and Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford Motor Co. had no updates this week besides what has been announced previously, company representatives said.

Japanese automakers Nissan Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. both said there were no updates for the remainder of the year, outside of their standard holiday breaks.

And Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler AG said that its Mercedes-Benz production facilities in the United States were running as usual.

By David Schollaert, David@SteelMarketUpdate.com

 

David Schollaert

David Schollaert is deputy editor-in-chief for Steel Market Update. David joined SMU after more than a decade in the metals and mining industry in a myriad of different roles. Much of his early experience and expertise were within the coverage and analysis of steel-making raw materials and served previously as senior editor of the CRU Prices Service. Most recently, however, before his return to market analysis, David held roles as a metals buyer and an operations manager for raw material suppliers. He can be contacted at david@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-720-1008.

Read more from David Schollaert

Latest in Steel Markets