Back in mid-September, an aluminum plant owned and operated by Novelis in Oswego, New York was ravaged by a massive fire, which will reportedly keep it offline for months. This is a big problem for several automakers that source aluminum from that company, especially Ford, which is its biggest customer. As a result, production of the Ford F-150 Lightning at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center is already on pause this week, and now, it’s being joined by the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator, too.
According to the Wall Street Journal, The Blue Oval informed workers at the Kentucky Truck Plant that it will be pausing production of the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator this week, due to issues with its aluminum supply chain. This pause is currently slated to last one week, according to that memo, but the automaker is also pulling forward scheduled downtime from later in the year to compensate.
Additionally, Ford has reportedly paused production at the Louisville Assembly plant last week as well, all in an effort to preserve its aluminum supply and save inventory for its F-Series line of pickups. Production there has resumed this week, albeit with just one of two shifts building the soon-to-be-discontinued Ford Escape and Lincoln Corsair crossovers. Ford is working to mitigate these impacts via other suppliers, while Novelis is trying to determine if aluminum from its overseas plants is up to Blue Oval standards.
Ford stock took a big hit after news of the fire originally broke, and as Ford Authority previously reported, analysts believe that the incident could cost The Blue Oval upwards of $1 billion, given the fact that it may impact production of the F-Series line of pickups through the end of the year, though the plant isn’t expected to come back fully online until Q1 2026. Ford isn’t alone in that regard, however, as Novelis churns out around 350,000 metric tons of sheet aluminum annually to it, along with Toyota, Hyundai, Volkswagen, and Stellantis, among other companies.
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