Daisy Watts 
Dec 10, 2023
Tata Group has decided to build one of India’s biggest iPhone assembly plants in southern Tamil Nadu to tap Apple’s ambitions to increase manufacturing in the South Asian country.
Gadgets360 — citing sources — reported that the facility will likely have about 20 assembly lines and employ 50,000 workers within two years. The goal of Tata Group is to get the site operational in 12 to 18 months.
It should be noted that the new plant is being built in line with Apple’s effort to localise its supply chain and strengthen its partnership with Tata — which already has an iPhone factory it acquired from Wistron, in the neighbouring Karnataka state.
The Cupertino-based company works with assembly and component manufacturing partners in India, Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere to diversify its operations away from China.
Reports suggest that Apple and Tata plan to request the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government to award subsidies for the new factory as it’s expected to begin production just as previous state-backed financial incentives are set to expire.
The new plant is set to be mid-sized among iPhone factories globally. It would likely be bigger than the one Tata acquired from Wistron, which employs more than 10,000 people, and smaller than Foxconn's biggest China facilities which employ hundreds of thousands.
