Pegatron Corp., a Shanghai producer of Apple iPad products was damaged over the weekend and 61 workers were injured when an explosion at the plant was witnessed, 23 employees were hospitalized after the incident.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately known and the plant was still under “pre-operation inspection” with only a running trial production currently underway.
This is the third time a Chinese factory carrying Apple Inc. components has exploded in the last 15 months, the first two occurring at plants owned and operated by top Apple parts partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd (Foxconn).
One explosion at a Foxconn factory in May injured at least 15 workers who were producing Apple iPad 2 devices, while a September fire slowed production but thankfully led to no reported injuries.
Once fully operational the recently exploded Pegatron plant is slated to produce back panel parts for the Appw iPad 2 along with part for other customers who the company has not disclosed at this time.
While some supply chain disruption will occur on Apple’s end they say the effects will be minimal at best.
Apple in the meantime has opened their own investigation into the explosion.
In the meantime this newest explosion will place China factories under even more nongovernmental scrutiny as worker safety and environmental issues continue to raise concerns in the region with a poor track record for safety and environmental concerns.
Moving forward Pegatron hopes to get the plant back online soon, noting that there appeared to be very little damage to machinery which should minimize the plants impact on operations and revenue.
After the explosion shares of Pegatron were trading down by 1.71 percent.