BMW cancels shifts at plants reportedly including Regensburg, Leipzig and Oxford

What BMW has said

A BMW spokesperson confirmed to the German Press Agency (dpa) that shifts had been cancelled at individual plants because of short-term shortages in the external parts supply. The company did not say which components are missing or what caused the bottleneck.

“Due to short-term bottlenecks in the external parts supply, shift cancellations are occurring at individual BMW Group plants.”

The spokesperson added that the company was in close contact with its supplier network and had taken measures to stabilise the parts supply and restart production.

Which plants are affected

BMW did not name the affected sites itself. According to company circles, three plants are or were affected: Regensburg in Germany, Leipzig in Germany and Oxford in the United Kingdom.

For scale, the articles give last year's output figures: just under 357,000 vehicles at Regensburg, just under 260,000 at Leipzig and around 124,000 at Oxford. Those figures describe total annual production, not the volume lost to the cancelled shifts.

What remains unclear

The company has not disclosed how much production has been lost in total. The stern report notes that a single cancelled shift can affect several hundred vehicles at a plant, but whether those vehicles are actually missing depends on how many shifts were cancelled, which BMW did not specify.

The articles also leave open which parts are missing, why the shortage occurred, how long the disruption will last and whether customer delivery times will shift. Stern adds that such production losses can often be made up later.