Super Typhoon Ragasa disrupts iPhone production, cross-border e-commerce in southern China

Super Typhoon Ragasa disrupted production of Apple’s iPhones in Shenzhen and crucial pre-holiday shipments by cross-border e-commerce merchants, as the year’s strongest storm barrelled towards southern China with heavy rain and hurricane-force winds.

The world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer, Foxconn Technology Group, on Tuesday suspended assembly work at its Shenzhen unit – the innovative Product Enclosure Business Group, responsible for high-speed connectors, memory and other mechanical parts of the iPhone – days after the newly launched iPhone 17 models started delivery last week.

Listed in Taiwan as Hon Hai Precision Industry, Foxconn announced via a subsidiary’s WeChat account that production would resume when the government announces that typhoon-related risks have eased.

The company’s production in Shenzhen, spread across two areas of the tech hub in southern Guangdong province, accounted for about 25 per cent of its total production capacity, according to Morgan Stanley data cited in a 2022 report by Taiwan’s Economic Daily News.