A factory owned by Foxlink that produces charger cables for the iPhone in Andhra Pradesh, India, burned violently on Monday (27/2).
As a result of the fire, 50% of the machines in the factory were damaged. Because of the large fire, two factory buildings collapsed, as quoted by us from Reuters on Wednesday (1/3/2023).
Foxlink is one of the business units of the UEI Precision Industry that produces cables for the iPhone charger. They built a factory in Andhra in 2020.
The impact of this fire on Apple, or the supply of iPhone has not been revealed. But clearly the amount of loss due to this incident reached USD 1 million and Foxlink had to stop the factory production for at least two months for the repair process.
In 2017, Apple began to assemble an iPhone in India via Wistron, which was then followed by Foxconn. Foxlink is one of the many companies that are part of the iPhone production chain in India.
If the charger cable supply from Foxlink stops, it is not impossible that iPhone production in India will also be hampered. Unless Apple has a "backup" of other charger cable suppliers.
In his official statement, Foxlink said the great fire made some of the buildings collapsed, but fortunately there were no casualties in the incident. They claimed to be working hard to start production at the factory.
They also mentioned that the equipment and inventory in the factory were protected by insurance, and the fire had not yet had a major impact on business conditions and financial foxlink.
Meanwhile the authorities in India said that a lot of security equipment in the Foxlink factory could not be used, such as the security system for smoke, sprinkler, and hydrants, which had an impact on the slow handling of fires.
"The smoke detection is not activated and the fire alarm does not turn on," said J Ramanaiah, the leader of the local fire department.