Foxconn Plant Will Make Ventilators

Ventilator. Photo by Ashashyou / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

The heavily subsidized Mount Pleasant plant owned by Foxconn will be used to manufacture ventilators, Medtronic Plc Chief Executive Officer Omar Ishrak told CNBC.

Foxconn confirmed the partnership in a statement on Wednesday, as Bloomberg reported, noting that “Evelyn Tsai, spokesperson for Foxconn founder Terry Gou, said production would take place in Wisconsin and Taiwan.”

“There has been a critical shortage of supply globally for ventilators needed in the treatment of severe cases of Covid-19,” the story reported. “Foxconn’s collaboration with Medtronic covers design and development of the devices. Production will start within the next four to six weeks, Ishrak said, without quantifying a volume.

“Foxconn has been making face masks, used to curb the spread of the virus, in China since February and its subsidiary Sharp Corp. also began churning them out in Japan in late March.”

Foxconn’s plans for the plant have changed repeatedly. First it was going to build Gen 10.5 plant for LCD products, than downgraded that to a Gen 6 plant, then postponed that until 2022, while floating other ideas, including one to make airport coffee kiosks and another plan to build a geodesic-like dome, which it dropped in a day and then later reinstated.

Foxconn has yet to create the number of jobs required under its state contract and the number of full-time, year-round employees wit has in Wisconsin is unknown. Nor is it known how many workers will be hired to manufacture ventilators.