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Foxconn's Mount Pleasant plant may assemble Google servers, Bloomberg reports

Posted at 8:29 PM, Nov 23, 2020
and last updated 2020-11-23 21:29:35-05

MOUNT PLEASANT — Foxconn plans to assemble components for Google's servers at its plant in Mount Pleasant, Bloomberg reports.

Sources tell the outlet that mass production of the components is expected to start in the first quarter of next year. That process includes making a new assembly line that will place semi-conductors onto circuit boards.

Foxconn is also developing infrastructure for a data center and "high-performance computing capabilities" at the plant, a Foxconn spokesperson told Bloomberg.

Foxconn got the deal from Google because it is the only manufacturer able of creating a surface-mount assembly line in the U.S., the same sources told Bloomberg.

The Taiwanese conglomerate signed an agreement with Wisconsin in 2017 to make nearly $4 billion in state and local tax incentives if it built a $10 billion display screen manufacturing campus that employs 13,000 people.

But since then, Foxconn has downsized the factory and failed to hire the proposed number of employees. Foxconn executives have toyed with making a number of different products at the plant, initially large display screens, then smaller thin-film transistor liquid crystal display screens and then masks amid the COVID-19 pandemic, among other items.

In mid-October, Wisconsin officials told Foxconn that the company will not qualify for the billions of dollars in credits, because officials said the company did not comply with their original agreement, notably hiring 13,000 people. Foxconn appealed that decision.

The Mount Pleasant plant is still under construction.

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