Nissan To Cut Production In North America By As Much As 20 Percent

Nissan's goal in the U.S. for quite some time was increasing its market share. To do this, the company piled on the incentives and sold more vehicles to rental car fleets. While fine in the short-term, the long-term effects would hurt profitability and brand image. This isn't helped by sales declining 6.5 percent this year and a growing supply of vehicles on dealers - Kelly Blue Book reports an 88-day supply of Nissan vehicles.

Nissan is changing its plan for the U.S. Back at the 2018 NADA Show in April, Nissan's U.S. sales chief Dan Mohnke told dealers the company would focus on boosting profitability by reducing inventory. One way to do that is cutting back on production.

The Nikkei Asian Review reports Nissan is slashing production as much as 20% at their North American plants. The cuts are already taking place at Nissan's two plants in the U.S. (Canton and Smyrna, TN) and three in Mexico. No layoffs are expected, instead, workers will have an extra day or two off of work. The cuts are expected to end in the fall when production of the next-generation Altima kicks off. It is expected that the production cut will drop Nissan's U.S. sales for the year by three percent.

Source: Nikkei Asian Review