Finance
Mercedes-Benz: in talks with suppliers over rare earth 'buffers'
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 4, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 4, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Mercedes-Benz is engaging suppliers to create rare earth stockpiles, learning from semiconductor shortages. The company is monitoring the situation closely.
By Christoph Steitz
RASTATT, Germany (Reuters) -Mercedes-Benz is talking to its top suppliers about building rare earth stockpiles even though the carmaker has not seen any impact from a shortage that has caused some suppliers to shut down plants and production lines.
"We have learnt a lot from the semiconductor situation in the automotive industry and are constantly ... looking at what risk portfolio we still have in the supply chain," Joerg Burzer, Mercedes-Benz's board member in charge of production said.
"We are of course in constant dialogue with our suppliers and of course we also discuss with them what the best tool is for risk management and the topic of physical buffers naturally plays a role here," he told journalists at a roundtable.
Earlier on Wednesday, Europe's auto supplier association CLEPA said several plants and production lines had been shut down due to a shortage of rare earths caused by China imposing restrictions on exports, warning of further outages to come.
Burzer said that while Mercedes-Benz was currently not affected by the shortage it was closely monitoring the situation and in constant dialogue with its tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers to mitigate the situation.
(Reporting by Christoph SteitzEditing by Madeline Chambers and Matthias Williams)
Mercedes-Benz is in talks with its top suppliers about building rare earth stockpiles to manage potential supply chain risks.
Currently, Mercedes-Benz has not been affected by the rare earth shortage but is closely monitoring the situation.
Mercedes-Benz has learned a lot from the semiconductor situation in the automotive industry and is actively assessing its supply chain risk portfolio.
CLEPA reported that several plants and production lines had been shut down due to a shortage of rare earths caused by China imposing restrictions.
Joerg Burzer, Mercedes-Benz's representative, mentioned that they are in constant dialogue with tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 suppliers regarding risk management.
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