Apple’s main assembly partner Foxconn has plans to build a new manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania. The new facility is part of a $40 million investment by the Taiwan-based company.
Foxconn, also known by its trading name Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., plans to spend $30 million over the next two years on a Harrisburg, Penn., factory that will assemble components for telecommunications equipment and Internet servers, chairman Terry Gou revealed this week, according to Bloomberg. The remaining $10 million will be invested in research and development at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Penn.
Foxconn’s new Harrisburg factory is expected to create approximately 500 jobs, expanding on an existing Foxconn facility in the state capital that employs 30 people. There has been no indication from the company if the new facility would be used to build products for Apple.
Foxconn officials were quoted last year as saying the idea of building products in the U.S. was intriguing, because there is a demand for it from American consumers.
Companies such as Apple have come under fire in recent years for using low-paid labor in the Far East to assemble their products. Critics says wages there are too low, and point to poor working conditions they say have caused employee suicides.
Apple responded by building the new model of its high-end Mac Pro desktop computer in the U.S. Assembly of that product is being handled by Flextronics in Texas.
