Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday confirmed rumors it plans to produce masks in Taiwan amid the expanding COVID-19 outbreak.
The world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer said it has contacted suppliers of raw materials and machinery equipment to produce masks for its home market.
While it gave few details about its production goals, the company, headquartered in New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城), said it hopes to contribute to Taiwanese society through its mask production.
Photo: Chen Kuan-pei, Taipei Times
The company’s statement came after New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said in an interview yesterday morning that Hon Hai had earlier reached out to the city about manufacturing masks for the domestic market as Taiwan continues to face a shortage, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) reported yesterday.
Hon Hai plans to set up 10 mask production lines at facilities held by its Hong-Kong listed subsidiary, FIT Hon Teng Ltd (鴻騰精密), in the city by the end of this month, the company said.
Mass production is scheduled to begin next month with an estimated daily output of 1 million units, Hon Hai said.
The company, known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been hit by production delays at its Chinese assembly plants caused by the outbreak, and has already planned to produce masks in China so that it can ensure a steady supply for its China-based employees.
Earlier this month, it began trial production of masks through its Foxconn Industrial Internet Co Ltd (富士康工業互聯網) subsidiary at its Longhua Park plant in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.
The Longhua Park plant is expected to produce 2 million masks per day by the end of the month, the company said.
Its mask output in Taiwan would also contribute to the government’s centralized mask distribution policy, which has been extended until the end of April.
Domestic production of masks, which the Ministry of Economic Affairs is supervising, has increased from 4.2 million units per day last week to 5.5 million units per day this week, ministry data showed.
Total production is expected to amount to 10 million masks on a daily basis by the end of next month, the ministry said.
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