Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦), an assembler of Apple Inc’s MacBooks, has partially resumed operations in Shanghai after a surge in COVID-19 cases led to lockdowns in the city.
The Quanta Shanghai Manufacturing City (QSMC, 廣達上海製造城), Quanta’s manufacturing base in Shanghai, on Friday resumed production with about 2,000 staff members working in a closed-loop management system, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.
Production at its F1 and F3 factories, which make laptops for Apple and accessories for Tesla Inc respectively, was under way, the report said.
Photo: Vanessa Cho, Taipei Times
The resumption means that 5 percent of QSMC’s 40,000 employees across eight factories in Shanghai have returned to work.
Quanta, the world’s biggest contract laptop manufacturer, on Wednesday announced that its subsidiary, Tech-Com (Shanghai) Computer Ltd (達功上海電腦), had halted production in response to the Shanghai city government’s introduction of COVID-19 prevention measures.
As Shanghai struggles to contain its worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years, disease prevention restrictions continue to put pressure on China’s economy.
To tackle the issue, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Friday unveiled a white list of 666 companies in sectors including automobiles, semiconductors, consumer electronics, food, equipment manufacturing, medicine and foreign trade for which priority would be given to resume production in Shanghai.
Companies applying to resume work must stock up on medical supplies and establish closed loops for workers, who must live at their workplace or be limited to traveling between work and home, guidance issued on Saturday said.
Contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), whose production in Shanghai’s Songjiang District is on the list, on Sunday said that its operations in the city had not been halted.
Also on the list are Taiwan-based IC packaging and testing services provider ASE Technology Holding Co’s (日月光投控) Shanghai factory, as well as Unimos Microelectronics (Shanghai) Co (紫光宏茂微電子上海), a company formed after China’s Tsinghua Unigroup Co (清華紫光) acquired a major share of Taiwan-based ChipMOS Technologies Inc’s (南茂科技) Shanghai subsidiary.
At least 30 Taiwanese firms, most of which make electronic components, on Wednesday said that the Chinese government’s COVID-19 control measures in eastern China had led them to suspend production, Reuters reported.
Despite the white list of priority companies, logistical bottlenecks persist due to closures ordered by authorities in other cities, as well as port and trucking disruptions.
An unnamed executive at a listed pharmaceutical firm told Shanghai Securities News that it was unclear how to transport goods, return orders or collect bills when resuming work given the ongoing curbs.
“These are real problems that the policy still needs to address,” the newspaper quoted them as saying.
Meanwhile, Tesla has restarted production at its Shanghai factory and laid out stringent measures for staff operating in the closed-loop system after a weeks-long suspension, people familiar with the matter said.
The electric vehicle maker’s Shanghai plant was producing about 2,100 vehicles a day, churning out 182,174 in the first quarter.
Ramping production back up from such a long shutdown would not be an instant process.
Tesla only has inventory for just more than two weeks based on its new closed-loop schedule, and logistics are a major problem for many other parts, another person familiar with the matter said.
Additional reporting by Reuters and Bloomberg
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS