Birmingham vanmaker LDV is to stop production for a period after bulk orders took longer than expected to materialise.
The Russian-owned company has written to suppliers telling them that its Washwood Heath plant will close for a week from February 18.
It told suppliers at a conference in November that the first quarter of 2008 was going to be "a period of low output", the letter said.
LDV said yesterday that it had enough Maxus vans to meet supplier demand for the next two weeks and the shutdown would allow it to "rebalance stocks".
The company had been expecting to start building 250 vans a month for Russia but this had been delayed. Work on a big order for Royal Mail, one of LDV's biggest customers, has also been delayed. The company has full production schedules in place from March and beyond.
Spokesman Steve Miller said: "We are shutting the plant next week because we are rebalancing our stocks. This is a bit of a blip but the business is still progressing."
LDV is owned by Russian commercial vehicle group Gaz, which plans to build the award-winning Maxus in Russia for its home market from 2009.
Between now and then the Washwood Heath firm ships vehicles to Russia at a rate that will build up to 400 a month by the end of this year.
The company, which has seen substantial investment on the part of Gaz since mid 2006, saw a rare reversal in registrations in January.
Figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders showed a 28 per cent fall to 416 units in the sub-3.5 tonne category in the first month of the year.
LDV registered a further 63 vehicles above 3.5 tonnes, a segment of the market it entered only recently.
Mr Miller said the January shortfall was due to the delay in registering vehicles for Royal Mail and that registrations for smaller customers rose by eight per cent.
Total truck and van registrations rose by 8.5 per cent in January to 26,745 units, the SMMT said.
Chief executive Paul Everitt commented: "We've seen a strong start to the year, with truck registrations back to expected volumes.
"January's figures are encouraging. It's early days, but by the end of the year we may well have have a total that exceeds the year-end average for each of the last ten years."
