Autoliv works to prevent disruptions from China rare earths

By Marie Mannes

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Autoliv, the world's biggest maker of airbags and seatbelts, has established a task force to tackle China's restrictions on rare earth magnet exports, and does not foresee a halt to the group's production in the coming weeks, its CEO said on Wednesday.

Several European auto supplier plants and production lines have been shut down due to a shortage of rare earths caused by China's export restrictions, Europe's auto supplier association CLEPA said on Wednesday, warning of further outages.

Autoliv's plants meanwhile remained in operation, CEO Mikael Bratt told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a group strategy update.

"We are all hands on deck across all these different challenges here," he said when asked about rare earth minerals.

"I think we're doing a good job to find ways to solve it, either through resourcing, material changes and also with permits because it's not impossible to get the permit to export either," Bratt added.

China, which controls over 90% of global processing capacity for the rare earth magnets, has said it would cooperate further with countries over its export controls as shortages put auto and semiconductor makers in Europe and India at risk of closure.

While many European companies are looking to invest in the U.S. as tariffs continue to weigh, Bratt said Autoliv did not expect to make any major investments there in the near term.

Autoliv announced in connection with its capital markets day on Wednesday that it would target a capital expenditure below 5% of sales.

"It's hard...to take any capex decisions based on the current tariff situation...You need to know what the tariffs will be, and you need to know how it will be for the foreseeable future," Bratt said.

"You need stability around all this. Then you can take a decision."

(Reporting by Marie Mannes, writing by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, editing by Stine Jacobsen , Terje Solsvik and Chizu Nomiyama )