Monday, September 10, 2012

Massive Foxconn Investment in Indonesia to Begin Producing By December (AAPL)

These guys move pretty quick.
Following up on Reuters' August 15 Story:
Foxconn to tap cheap labor in Indonesia, huge consumer market
linked in our post "Here's the Robot that Foxconn Will Use to Build Their Million-strong "Robot Kingdom" (ABB; AAPL)"

Foxconn Technology Group's investment of up to $10 billion in Indonesia will allow the main supplier of Apple Inc to tap one of the cheapest labor forces in Asia and a duty-free zone of some 600 million consumers....
...Taiwan-based Foxconn plans to start building a plant in October in an industrial zone near Jakarta to assemble 3 million handsets a year and then to increase output and products later, Indonesia's Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan said on Tuesday. The investment would be between $5 billion and $10 billion, he said....MORE 
Here's the latest from the Jakarta Post:
Ministers say Foxconn to begin operations in Dec.
Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group will kick off operations in Indonesia in December this year, aiming to produce 3 million cell phones in the initial phase, top government officials said recently.

Industry Minister MS Hidayat said the company’s first production facility in Indonesia would be ready in October, located in the Modern Cikande Industrial Estate in Cikande, Serang, Banten.

The industrial estate, 68 kilometers from Jakarta, has a good access to the country’s main port Tanjung Priok in North Jakarta and Soekarna-Hatta International Airport in Cengkareng, Tangerang, Banten.

The initial phase of Foxconn investment in Indonesia will absorb hundreds of million of dollars from the total investment, amounting of US$10 billion, he added....MORE
Amazingly (to me anyway) this is Foxconn's first manufacturing operation in Southeast Asia.
I suppose the next step is Viet Nam then Malaysia, then India, somewhere in Africa and finally the United States in time for the robot revolution.