Foxconn Suspends Production at Two Kunshan Plants in China... Apple Supply Chain Crisis

Factory Operations Halted Due to COVID-19 Spread

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyunjung] Apple’s largest contract manufacturer, Foxconn, has halted operations at two factories in eastern China, triggering an emergency in Apple’s supply chain in China.

On the 25th, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that due to the spread of COVID-19 in the Kunshan area of eastern China, the Denpa and Fuhong factories in the northern part of the region were closed. SCMP cited an anonymous factory worker, stating that COVID-19 cases were confirmed at the related factories and that operations had already been suspended since the 20th.

These factories in Kunshan are known to account for about 20-30% of total iPhone production. Factory workers are currently quarantined in dormitories.

Kunshan, with a population of 2.1 million, had decided to lock down the city earlier this month to curb the spread of the Omicron variant, but the city government permitted the resumption of production at 60 factories in the area starting early last week.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Kunshan is located about 51 km east of Shanghai, and on the 22nd, 23 new confirmed cases were reported. This is a significant increase from single-digit cases a week earlier.

Ming-Chi Kuo, a TF International Securities analyst and a well-known Apple information source, recently posted on his social media that “a full resumption of production (in Shanghai and Kunshan) may not be possible until late April or early May.”

Meanwhile, according to the People’s Daily in 2020, Foxconn’s cumulative sales in China since 1993 have reached about 290 billion yuan (approximately 55.1551 trillion won), with tens of thousands of workers employed at its factories in China.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.