A number of Chinese manufacturers including a subsidiary of Apple Inc partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) have refitted production lines to make masks and medical clothing, as the 2019 novel coronavirus spreads across China.
The move highlights how private companies are pitching in to alleviate a nationwide shortage of medical gear amid the health crisis, at times expanding beyond their core lines of business.
Hon Hai, known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), said in a social media post on Thursday that it has begun trial production of surgical masks at its Longhua Park plant in Shenzhen, China, and expects to produce 2 million masks daily by the end of the month.
The firm said that the masks would initially be produced for internal use by its hundreds of thousands of employees, the majority of whom work in factories in China.
SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co Ltd (上海通用五菱), an automaking venture of General Motors Co and two Chinese partners, also announced on Thursday via social media that it would set up 14 production lines, with the goal of making 1.7 million masks daily.
Hongdou Group Co Ltd (紅豆集團), a clothing manufacturer founded in the 1950s, on Tuesday wrote on social media that it had refitted a factory to make disposable medical suits.
The company said that it intends to produce about 60,000 protective suits a month and would send them to the government for allocation and distribution.
Hongdou employs 30,000 people, its Web site said.
Apparel peers Zhejiang Giuseppe Garment Co Ltd (浙江喬治白服飾) and Jihua Group Corp Ltd (際華集團) have launched similar initiatives, state media outlets reported this week.
Factories inside and outside of China have worked around the clock to keep up with demand since the outbreak of the virus at the end of last year in Wuhan, China. Pharmacies in commercial districts have posted signs telling customers that masks are not in stock.
One Czech mask manufacturer last last month said that orders increased 57,000 percent within four days.
To cope with the shortage, localities in China have set up rationing systems.
In Shanghai, people wanting to obtain masks must provide a neighborhood committee with their ID and phone number, after which they are contacted when they can retrieve a set of masks.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by