Honda Motor Co, on Tuesday said it estimates that last autumn’s Thai floods will cut its global shipments by 260,000 cars in the financial year ending in March.
Honda suffered the biggest disruption of any automaker to its supply chain both from Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami and Thailand’s historic floods in October, with the only car factory to be inundated in the Southeast Asian export hub.
The company said it is working with the local industrial park to build water protection walls around the plant and will make requests of the Thai government to take steps to prevent the risk of flooding in the future.
The Japanese automaker, which had previously held off giving forecasts for the year to March due to uncertainty related to the Thai flooding, said it expected annual net profit to fall to 215 billion yen, down 59.7% from the previous year.
Quarterly sales slid eight percent during the fiscal third quarter to 1.942 trillion yen. The strong yen, which erodes Japanese exporters’ profits, slashed 131 billion yen from that total, it said.
The Thai plant makes the Jazz, Civic, Accord, CR-V sports utility vehicle and other vehicles.
