Crisis Causes 54% Production Drop for Nissan

Just as we expected, automakers around the world reported very low production and sales figures for January 2009, which emphasized once again that the first month of the year was the toughest 30-day period since the beginning of the recession. Japanese automaker Nissan is the best example when it comes to slow sales as the company today announced that its global production in January decreased 54 percent year-on-year to 145,286 units while production in the United States fell 70.7 percent to 17,741.

The largest drop was reported in Spain where production decreased 89.4 percent to 2,177 units, the company said in the January 2009 report.

Nissan global sales fell 26.6 percent to 227,769 units when compared to the year before, with Japan unveiling a decrease of 31.1 percent to 30,785. And more importantly, Nissan's share of the domestic market fell 0.8 points to 17.7 percent, as reported by the company.

When talking about the United States, figures are disappointing as well. Sales in the US decreased 29.7 percent to 53,884 despite the fact that the company's market share grew 0.9 points to 8.2 percent. Sales were down in Europe too, with overall sales decreased by 27.3 percent to 36,735 units but market share increased 0.2 points to 3.2 percent.

In terms of exports, numbers fell dramatically. Nissan's exports to North America were decreased by 84.7 percent to 5,824 units while those in Europe fell 70.4 percent to only 1,552 units.

Nissan has already started a broader campaign to save costs and align production with the market demand, as mentioned by the company itself, so production and sales should become a bit more stable in the next months.