Nissan shifts best

TOKYO (AP):

Nissan is back, one year after an earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan ground auto production to a halt, left giant cracks at a key factory, and killed five employees and 17 family members. It's a story of surprising recovery that's playing out at other Japanese automakers, but particularly at Nissan.

On Friday, ahead of today's one-year anniversary of the disaster, Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn, called it "miraculous", crediting hard work at his company. The maker of the March subcompact and Infiniti luxury brands had a record sales year of 4.67 million vehicles in 2011. That was up 14 per cent from the previous year.

By May 2011, Nissan Motor Co's Iwaki plant in Fukushima Prefecture, devastated by the disaster that killed more than 19,000 people, was almost completely restored to full operations.

But it's not all plain sailing for Japan Inc and its automakers. There are still big risks from perennial problems such as the strong yen, executives and analysts say. Globalisation of production can help Japan's automakers minimise the yen challenge but comes with its own potential headaches as shown by last year's flooding in Thailand - a major production base for Japanese carmakers.

Toyota Motor Corp had initially expected to lose production of two million vehicles from the March 11, 2011, disaster, which damaged key suppliers in north-eastern Japan, including Renesas Electronics Corp, a computer chip maker. But when all was done, Japan's number one automaker ended up losing production of 370,000 vehicles - 220,000 of them in the first month after the disaster.

Nissan Motor Co CEO Carlos Ghosn poses with the auto-maker's 'Leaf' zero-emission electric vehicle at the 41st Tokyo Motor Show at Maku-hari Messe in Makuhari, near Tokyo, Japan, in 2009. - Contributed