Foxconn Technology will transform its south China manufacturing hub into an engineering base and move 200,000 jobs to cheaper inland provinces in a further sign that the region’s days as a low-end production centre are numbered.
The world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer employs 1m people in China. About half its workforce is based at two huge factory complexes in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong.
“Shenzhen will probably be our largest site in China for quite some time to come,” Louis Woo, special assistant to group chairman Terry Gou, told the Financial Times. “But the goal is to eventually move all of the actual mass manufacturing to other sites. We will make Shenzhen an engineering campus where we do pilot production only.”