Two Apple suppliers in Vietnam have been forced to temporarily close their plants due to a localized surge in COVID-19 cases.
The Vietnamese government has ordered the closure of four industrial parks, resulting in plant closures for both Foxconn and Luxshare …
Bloomberg reports:
Vietnam has instructed Foxconn Technology Group and Luxshare Precision Industry Co. to temporarily shut their factories amid a virus surge in the northern region, said Le Anh Duong, chairman of the People’s Committee of Bac Giang Province.
“They are implementing our request to temporarily close down entire factories and we will send health officials in to help them reorganize to be able to quickly resume operations and restrain the virus’ spread at the same time,” he said by phone. “We hope to resume operations of these factories in two weeks to limit disruptions to the global supply chain” […]
Luxshare and Foxconn — both suppliers of Apple Inc. — have plants in Van Trung and Quang Chau industrial parks, Duong said.
The action was prompted by the fact that more than a third of all COVID-19 cases in Vietnam occurred in Bac Giang Province.
The report doesn’t specify whether Apple production was hit, but it seems likely. Foxconn has been working on moving some of its iPad and MacBook production from China to Vietnam; the plant earmarked for the assembly work was one of those forced to close; and production was scheduled to begin in the first half of this year.
Foxconn is moving some iPad and MacBook assembly to Vietnam from China at the request of Apple Inc, said a person with knowledge of the plan […] Foxconn is building assembly lines for Apple’s iPad tablet and MacBook laptop at its plant in Vietnam’s northeastern Bac Giang province, to come online in the first half of 2021.
Apple was already reported to be struggling with production of the latest 12.9-inch iPad due to limited capacity for the miniLED backlight tech. The company last month warned that both iPads and Macs were likely to be in short supply this quarter.
Additionally, iPhone production in India has been disrupted by the spread of the virus.
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