Takata to boost production of replacement air bag inflators

DETROIT (Reuters) - Takata Corp <7312.T> said on Wednesday it plans to boost production of parts needed to replace potentially deadly air bag inflators that could spray vehicle occupants with metal shards.

On Tuesday, Takata doubled its recall of the defective air bags to nearly 34 million vehicles, making it the largest automotive recall in U.S. history.

Takata's air bag inflators have been found to explode with too much force, spraying metal fragment inside cars and have forced automakers to recall more than 53 million vehicles worldwide since 2008. The component has been linked to six deaths, all in cars made by the supplier's top customer, Honda Motor Co Ltd <7267.T>

A Takata spokesman said the company will boost output of the replacement parts to 1 million inflators a month by September, an increase of 100,000 parts from the previous forecast and up from the current monthly level of 500,000. He did not specify if all the additional production would be added at Takata's inflator plant in Monclova, Mexico.

Takata said in February it would double production to 900,000 inflator kits by September from 450,000 parts at the time. The Takata spokesman said the company had just passed 3.8 million replacement kits made in total.

Takata has faced pressure from U.S. safety regulators, lawmakers and its automaker customers to increase production of the replacement parts needed in the recall.

On Tuesday, Mark Rosekind, administrator for the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said he did not know how long it would take to complete the Takata recall. "There is no question, it could be some years," he said.

Takata has said in the past it is working with other suppliers to increase availability of replacement parts.

Takata shares fell 10.2 percent to 1,353 yen in Tokyo on Wednesday.

General Motors Co said last December it had developed contingency plans to deal with a potential shortage of replacement parts, including directing Takata to share inflator specifications and data with rivals Autoliv and TRW so that any replacement parts would work in GM vehicles. A GM spokesman said Wednesday there was no update on those plans, but it was doing extensive testing.

Autoliv said on Wednesday it was ready to boost production capacity to meet increased demand for replacement air bag inflators needed in the Takata recall.

The Swedish company said in January it was targeting additional production capacity of up to 25 million air bag inflators for delivery in 2015 and 2016.

Autoliv spokesman Thomas Jonsson said on Wednesday that the company is building replacement inflators for Honda and several other unidentified automakers, but he had no sense of how long it would take for the industry to meet the demand for replacement inflators.

(Additional reporting by David Morgan in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

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