Toyota announced Wednesday that its group, including Daihatsu and Hino Motors, set a new record for car sales in markets outside Japan in February 2022, despite the material shortage due to the covid-19 pandemic.

That month, the group sold 531,183 vehicles, an increase of 16% over the same period last year, 620,360 vehicles, an increase of 5.2% over February 2020.

The group as a whole produced 884,528 vehicles and sold 774,860 during February. Total production was up almost 11% in February from last year, but overall sales were down 1.6%.

Toyota alone exceeded its global production target plan for February released a month earlier by nearly 41,000 vehicles. But the level was below the year-ago period due to a parts supply shortage in North America due to COVID-19 and a tight supply of parts in Europe due to increased demand.

Toyota also said that to deal with the shortage of semi-conductors it had used surplus material from one of its plants that was closed in January due to the pandemic.