Govt. to hand over land for iPhones in Bengaluru by July 1

Foxconn, a key Apple supplier, will start manufacturing iPhones in Bengaluru by April 2024, the Minister for Large and Medium Industries, MB Patil said on Thursday. India Today reported that the company has plans to start manufacturing iPhones at its proposed Devanahalli plant and the state government will hand over the required land by July 1 to facilitate this.

Patil said that along with this, the government would ensure providing 5 MLD of water, quality power supply, road connectivity, and other infrastructure facilities by providing 300 acres of land in ITIR of Devanahalli.

57 lakh crore have been recovered so far in May, the government said.

The move comes just weeks after the new government was taken over by the Congress in Karnataka. The project, worth Rs.13,600 crore, is aimed at creating 50,000 jobs. The minister added that Foxconn had been asked to provide the details of the skill sets it seeks in employees. steps are also being taken to Facilitate training programs for eligible candidates to make them employable, he said.

Foxconn already paid 30 per cent of the cost of the land to the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board. The tech giant has set the goal to complete the project in three terms and has set a goal of manufacturing 20 million units / 2 crore units annually from the plant after the completion of three phases.

The minister made the announcement after the company's representatives, led by George Chu, met him as part of a courtesy visit. Minister of Information and Technology Priyanka Kharge, Karnataka's Information and Technology Minister, was also present.

Last month, Foxconn announced that it had bought a huge parcel of land in Bengaluru, a tech hub. Apple is the world's biggest contract electronics manufacturer and is a major assembler of Apple iPhones. The company said it had acquired a 1.2 million-square-meter 13 million-square-foot land in Devanahalli, near the airport for Bengaluru.

In March, former chief minister Basavaraj Bommai of Karnataka said Apple would soon manufacture iPhones at a new plant that would create about 100,000 jobs.