Hyundai Motor Co yesterday shut down a factory in South Korea after a worker tested positive for COVID-19, disrupting production of popular models such as the Palisade sport utility vehicle (SUV).
Shares of the automaker ended down more than 5 percent after the news, while the wider market was down 3.3 percent. The closing dealt a fresh setback to Hyundai, which has gradually resumed production at local plants hit by a parts shortage in the wake of an outbreak in China.
South Korea has the most infected people outside of China, affecting companies like Samsung and Hyundai.
Photo: Reuters Via Yonhap
“The company has also placed colleagues who came in close contact with the infected employee in self-quarantine and taken steps to have them tested for possible infection,” Hyundai said in a news release.
The company added that it was disinfecting the factory. It did not say when production would resume.
The factory is in Ulsan, less than an hour from Daegu, the epicenter of outbreak in South Korea.
Hyundai operates five vehicle factories in Ulsan, which has an annual production capacity of 1.4 million vehicles, or nearly 30 percent of Hyundai’s global production. Hyundai employs 34,000 workers there in the world’s biggest auto complex.
The factory that was shut down produces SUVs such as the Palisade, Tucson, Santa Fe and Genesis GV80.
A factory run by Hyundai supplier Seojin Industrial Co Ltd had been closed after the death of a virus-infected worker there. It reopened on Wednesday.
South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd shut down a smartphone factory in the southeastern city of Gumi over the past weekend after one of its workers tested positive. It resumed production on Monday.
South Korea’s top carrier, Korean Air Lines Co Ltd, yesterday said that it would redue the number of flights to the US next month as part of a plan to cut its global capacity by 11 percent that month.
It plans to check the temperatures of passengers traveling to the US before boarding and said that it would not allow anyone with a temperature higher than 37.5°C to fly.
One of its flight attendants who served the Incheon-Los Angeles route has tested positive for virus.
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