At least 10 people received medical treatment, with two hospitalized after a major fire on Saturday disrupted production at a key Tata Electronics Pvt Ltd plant in southern India that makes Apple Inc’s iPhone components.
The fire occurred at the plant in the city of Hosur in Tamil Nadu state that makes some iPhone components. It broke out near another building inside the Tata complex, which was to begin producing complete iPhones in the coming months.
The fire was contained to one building and has been extinguished fully, top district administrative official K.M. Sarayu said.
Photo: Reuters
No decision has been made on when manufacturing could restart, she said.
“Fumes are still coming since it’s a chemical hazard. It will take time for the search and rescue team to go inside and do an assessment. We have to wait till tomorrow,” she added.
Sarayu said that 523 workers were on shift when the fire broke out in the early morning and that all workers had been evacuated and accounted for.
Savitri, an eyewitness who lives near the plant and only gave her first name, said she heard “loud sounds around 5:30am that sounded like crackers going off. After that, we just saw plumes of smoke from the building, and there was thick smoke till at least 10 in the morning.”
The fire began in an area used to store chemicals, a fire official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Tata Electronics is one of the major contract makers of iPhones in India, along with Foxconn Technology Group (富士康).
The company said it was investigating the cause of the fire and would take the necessary steps to safeguard employees and other stakeholders.
“Our emergency protocols at the plant ensured that all employees are safe,” a Tata Electronics spokesperson said.
It was not yet possible to say when production at the facility would resume, as “we will need to go in to understand more, depending on the damage,” J. Saravanan, a senior district official charged with handling industrial safety, said.
He said the injuries were all related to smoke inhalation but gave no further detail.
Production was halted and employees were sent home for the day following the fire, a person with direct knowledge of the incident said, describing the blaze as chemical-related.
It was not yet clear if a neighboring building where smartphone manufacturing was due to start by year-end had also been affected, a second industry source said.
With the facility inaccessible at the moment, an assessment of damage from the fire would have to be done later, the source said.
Apple made no immediate comment on the incident.
Last year, Apple supplier Foxlink Group (正崴) halted production at its assembly facility in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh after a massive fire led part of the building to collapse.
SMART MANUFACTURING: The company aims to have its production close to the market end, but attracting investment is still a challenge, the firm’s president said Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said its long-term global production plan would stay unchanged amid geopolitical and tariff policy uncertainties, citing its diversified global deployment. With operations in Taiwan, Thailand, China, India, Europe and the US, Delta follows a “produce at the market end” strategy and bases its production on customer demand, with major site plans unchanged, Delta president Simon Chang (張訓海) said on the sidelines of a company event yesterday. Thailand would remain Delta’s second headquarters, as stated in its first-quarter earnings conference, with its plant there adopting a full smart manufacturing system, Chang said. Thailand is the firm’s second-largest overseas
‘REMARKABLE SHOWING’: The economy likely grew 5 percent in the first half of the year, although it would likely taper off significantly, TIER economist Gordon Sun said The Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) yesterday raised Taiwan’s GDP growth forecast for this year to 3.02 percent, citing robust export-driven expansion in the first half that is likely to give way to a notable slowdown later in the year as the front-loading of global shipments fades. The revised projection marks an upward adjustment of 0.11 percentage points from April’s estimate, driven by a surge in exports and corporate inventory buildup ahead of possible US tariff hikes, TIER economist Gordon Sun (孫明德) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy likely grew more than 5 percent in the first six months
SUPPLY RESILIENCE: The extra expense would be worth it, as the US firm is diversifying chip sourcing to avert disruptions similar to the one during the pandemic, the CEO said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) on Wednesday said that the chips her company gets from supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would cost more when they are produced in TSMC’s Arizona facilities. Compared with similar parts from factories in Taiwan, the US chips would be “more than 5 percent, but less than 20 percent” in terms of higher costs, she said at an artificial intelligence (AI) event in Washington. AMD expects its first chips from TSMC’s Arizona facilities by the end of the year, Su said. The extra expense is worth it, because the company is
The seizure of one of the largest known mercury shipments in history, moving from mines in Mexico to illegal Amazon gold mining zones, exposes the wide use of the toxic metal in the rainforest, according to authorities. Peru’s customs agency, SUNAT, found 4 tonnes of illegal mercury in Lima’s port district of Callao, according to a report by the non-profit Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA). “This SUNAT intervention has prevented this chemical from having a serious impact on people’s health and the environment, as can be seen in several areas of the country devastated by the illegal use of mercury and illicit activities,”
RSS