Suzuki has halted production of the Swift at their Sagara plant in Japan due to China’s rare earth restrictions. Suzuki is one of the first manufacturers to get the brunt of the restrictions. Many other parts manufacturers are also seeing difficulty in procurement of raw materials which is leading to production delays.

According to Reuters the Suzuki Swift production was stopped but will pick up again from June 13, with full production starting from June 16th.

In April this year, China decided to suspend and restrict the export of rare earth metals globally. This means that some vital components like magnets used in the automatic, aerospace, semiconductor and military applications are seeing shortages and the global supply chains cannot compensate for the shortages.

Suzuki had announced a stop to the production of the regular Swift this year except for the Swift Sport from May 26th to June 6th but they had not mentioned any reasoning for the production halts.

Even Mercedes Benz is trying to explore options to not get entangled into supply chain issues regarding these rare earth materials. This means that more shortages may occur in the future and many industries will be affected including the Indian automotive industries.