Four days before Christmas, while China was battening down the hatches to survive the explosion of Covid-19 infections around the country, the world’s largest contract assembler of electronic gadgets quietly finalised plans to relocate some of its Apple iPad and MacBook production to Vietnam.
The move by Foxconn Technology Group, on the drawing board since late 2020, is expected to become reality this year, with the first products expected to roll off its plant in Vietnam’s Bai Giang province as early as May.
Neither Foxconn nor Apple has formally confirmed the shift. Yet the plan aligns with Apple’s strategy to make Vietnam the largest final assembler for its products outside mainland China. Taiwan’s Foxconn, also known by its corporate name Hon Hai Precision Industry, already has 60,000 people on staff in Vietnam, and announced a US$270 million investment last year to set up a new subsidiary there.
“The uncertainty of and dependency on China have really thrust the importance of knowing who your suppliers are, into the spotlight and into boardrooms”, said Sumit Vakil, the co-founder of Resilinc, a consultancy that provides advice on supply chain mapping, monitoring and resilience solutions. “There is no going back to how supply chains operated [before the onset of] Covid-19”.
