After a week of headlines suggesting Foxconn was abandoning or at least reevaluating plans for a LCD display fabrication facility in Mount Pleasant, the company now says it will move ahead with a Gen 6 fab at the complex.
The company is moving ahead with the projects it said it would build in the next 18 months. Those facilities include assembly, packaging and molding operations. Building those facilities first would allow the company to ship components to Mount Pleasant for assembly while the fabrication facility, which would actually make the screens, is built.
Getting operations up and running would help the company increase its employment in the state, allowing it to potentially earn payroll tax credits. The company needs at least 1,820 employees in 2020 to earn any tax credits for job creation.
The Gen 6 plant, however, is still a departure from Foxconn’s original plans. When the project was first announced, the company said it would build a Gen 10.5 plant to make the largest screens in the world. The larger screen market, however, has been plagued by oversupply in recent years.