Apple Sends Team To Tata’s iPhone Facility For ‘Counsel & Advise’ After Blaze

A few days after a major fire broke out at Tata Electronics’ iPhone plant in Tamil Nadu’s Hosur prompting the officials to suspend its production for an indefinite period, Apple has reportedly sent a supplier responsibility (SR) team to the facility to review the situation and “counsel and advise” the contract manufacturer.

As per ET, the SR team comprises three Apple officials which are expected to provide support to its sole Indian vendor which produces enclosures for the iPhones.

“Apple generally sends its SR team whenever there is a safety issue or labour-related incident,” the report quoted a source as saying.

“The company has around six units, of which one got completely burned out,” another source added.

On Saturday (September 28), a major fire broke out at Tata Electronics’ iPhone plant in Hosur during wee hours, temporarily disrupting the operations. Although no casualty was reported, it remains uncertain of the scale of operations impacted at the facility during the incident.

“There has been an unfortunate incident of fire at our plant in Hosur, Tamil Nadu. Our emergency protocols at the plant ensured that all our employees are safe,” a Tata Electronics spokesperson then said.

One of the sources confirmed that a government-related probe is also underway and the director of the Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health (DISH) would inspect the unit that was affected by fire, based on the report.

DISH is expected to inspect the unit and evaluate if it’s safe for workers to begin working again “in the next two days”, the person said. The company can resume production only after it gets a green sign after the inspection.

The source added, “The company would have made alternate arrangements so that the production is not impacted as much because the site has to be preserved for the enquiry. They will also probably look into factors like air quality, presence of alternate arrangements.”

This also comes at a time when telecom major Reliance Jio also faced a fire incident in the morning at the Jio IDC Data Centre leading to a severe outage across its network in Mumbai, on September 17. 

Meanwhile, multinational conglomerate Tata Group is all set for its second iPhone assembly unit in India, to be built in Hosur and is expected to go operational in November.

On the hiring roadmap, Tata Sons’ chairman N Chandrasekaran then said that Tata Electronics is set to hire over 20,000 people at its new iPhone assembly plant in Hosur soon, bringing the total headcount of employees at the facility to 40,000.