Units of Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co are targeting to resume full operations of their Ho Chi Minh City plants by the end of next month, a move that could provide relief to global supply chains.
Saigon Hi-Tech Park is helping its tenants, many of which are running at about 70 percent capacity, to operate fully next month, park deputy manager Le Bich Loan said in a phone interview.
She did not elaborate on the steps the park is taking, particularly efforts at bringing back workers who fled to home provinces.
Photo: Bloomberg
The Ho Chi Minh City unit of Nidec Sankyo Corp, maker of magnetic card readers and micro motors, also expects to return to full operations late next month, Saigon Giai Phong newspaper reported, citing Loan.
The technology park is home to dozens of factories that produce components or services for global companies.
Representatives of Samsung, Intel and Nidec Sankyo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Many companies operating in Saigon Hi-Tech Park lost about 20 percent of their export orders in July and August, Loan was quoted as saying by Saigon Giai Phong.
COVID-19 infections surged in Vietnam during those months, prompting movement restrictions and, in some factory belts, government requirements to provide on-site sleeping arrangement for workers or shut down.
Samsung in July shut three of its 16 workshops in Saigon Hi-Tech, as it also reduced workers at its HCMC CE Complex by more than half.
Intel, which has a test and assembly plant in Saigon Hi-Tech, had its workers on a sleepover arrangement to avoid halting operations.
While small, Vietnam plays an out-sized role in the global consumer economy, supplying everything from Walmart Inc furniture and Adidas AG sneakers to Samsung smartphones.
After China, it is the second-largest supplier of clothes and shoes to the US, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association. Its importance increased during the trade dispute between the US and China, as manufacturing moved there to avoid tariffs.
At this point, there is little brands like Nike Inc, which recently cut its sales forecast largely on the lack of goods from Vietnam, can do. Factories in other countries are overloaded with orders, and it would take months to train workers and move machinery.
The missed production would be especially apparent at retailers in December and extend well into the first quarter, said Camilo Lyon, an analyst for BTIG who projected that output from Vietnam would not return to normal until the middle of next year.
The full impact of this upheaval has not been priced into the stocks of apparel and footwear companies with big exposure to Vietnam, he said.
“The challenges are by no means over,” Lyon said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS