The on-off production drama over at Saab’s Trollhättan facility in Sweden continues as the troubled automaker said Wednesday that it temporarily halted production due to a lack of components from its suppliers only two weeks after resuming making cars following a seven-week shutdown.
Saab said that it anticipated production hiccups in the start-up phase, as the supply chain still is not fully operational with some suppliers holding back until they get paid and others trying to re-stock.
“In order to avoid disruptions as a result of irregular inflows of certain components and parts, Saab Automobile has decided to temporary suspend production and will resume production as soon as possible once it has secured a more stable inflow of components and parts together with its supplier base,” the Swedish company said in a statement.
Spyker Cars N.V. and Saab boss Victor Muller said the company is working to solve the problems to get production back to normal. He explained:
“We anticipated that we would not see a smooth inflow of supplies as from the day we restarted production, May 27th, and communicated that in our press release of that day. We have a few thousand suppliers worldwide with each of whom we have to reach acceptable terms and conditions to resume production of parts and subsequent deliveries. Many suppliers are located outside Europe and re-stocking inevitably takes time.
“Thus far we have reached agreements with the vast majority of our suppliers and we are confident that we will reach agreement with all remaining suppliers in the coming days, thereby stabilizing our operations and our production in particular. However, it is not to be excluded that we will see production hiccups in the near future until the supply chain is fully back to normal. I reiterate our appreciation for our suppliers who are working with us constructively to come to terms and put our production back on track. At this moment, we have almost 10,000 orders on hand, including those for the Saab 9-4X which is currently being built in Mexico.”
Saab was able to restart its factory in late-May after scoring a deal with Chinese car distributor Pang Da to buy €30 million worth of cars with the company later adding another order for vehicles valued at €15 million.
