A few days ago, Louis Woo, special assistant to Foxconn's Chief Executive Terry Gou, made a statement to Reuters disclosing that the company was changing its strategy and no longer planned to build an LCD manufacturing factory in Wisconsin. Woo also mentioned that the company might consider building a “technology hub” in its stead, mainly consisting of research facilities, with some assembly and packaging operations on the side, however, nothing concrete was announced.
Foxconn first announced the Wisconsin project in 2017. Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin at that time, enabled the manufacturer to receive an astounding $4.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies, expecting the creation of 13,000 jobs from the $10 billion project. Back then the company made many promises, such as Gen 10.5 facilities for LCD production, equipped with the latest technology. While Foxconn had seemingly changed its plans for the facility at Wisconsin, it did reaffirm its intention on delivering the number of jobs promised.
Today, after talks were allegedly held with the White House, the behemoth tech manufacturer decided to change its plans yet again, and says a factory is being built after all. In a statement to The Verge, Foxconn said:
“After productive discussions between the White House and the company, and after a personal conversation between President Donald J. Trump and Chairman Terry Gou, Foxconn is moving forward with our planned construction of a Gen 6 fab facility,”
In place of the original Gen 10.5 factory, the Taiwanese company plans on making a much smaller plant called a Gen 6 facility. It will still be bigger than the assembliy plant that would be part of the "technology hub" mentioned earlier, however, it will not create as many jobs for blue-collar manufacturing workers as promised initially. Instead, it will have a large focus on "high technology innovation" in addition to manufacturing.
As for the expected launch date and project schedule for the Gen 6 facility, Foxconn made no further comment and did not disclose any more information on the matter.
Source: The Verge
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