Toyota Australia says the impact of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami on its vehicle production is affecting its parts suppliers in Samoa, where 800 employees of Yazaki Samoa have had their work hours cut by up to half.
The disaster has meant the volume of car parts manufactured by Toyota in Japan has been halved.
As a result, Toyota Australia has decided to halve its production from May the 9th for its Altona plant in Melbourne.
A spokesman for the company, Glenn Campbell says it acknowledges this cutback is creating difficulty for its suppliers.
"Obviously we see a reduction in parts so what we've done is we've maintained production so that what we want to do is maintain demand for our parts from our suppliers as smoothly as possible, so by reducing our production to 50 percent, it means we keep building cars, we keep needing parts from our suppliers."
Glenn Campbell says Toyota Australia is working hard to restore its vehicle production to 100 percent as quickly as possible.
