With the market for liquid crystal display (LCD) panels tanking, Foxconn has pivoted its production plans for its $10 billion Wisconsin facility in Racine County.
With the market for liquid crystal display (LCD) panels tanking, Foxconn has altered the plans for its $10 billion Wisconsin production facility in Racine County.
Instead of hiring as many as 13,000 workers to build the display panels, Foxconn says it will, instead, recruit 13 local Racine-based employees to ramp up the manufacturing of an altogether different kind of product.
“When in Racine, you make kringle, right?” said Foxconn’s Wisconsin site manager, Sly Willeigh.
“Truth is, we haven't really done much of anything with our newly built $10 billion facility, other than play hockey, soccer and a little hacky sack,” Willeigh told media at a press conference Thursday, “so it was easy enough to change paths.”
So far, Foxconn has invested $150K in the purchase of three bakery ovens with the hope of beginning kringle production "as soon as possible" on its 10,000-acre campus in Mount Pleasant, just west of Racine.
According to Willeigh, the company plans to partner with a local bakery on recipe development send at least two of its employees on a reconnaissance mission next week, with the goal of aquiring the trade secrets needed from one of the smaller bakeries in Racine.
When asked, Willeigh declined to identify the bakery. But he did indicate that Foxconn will utilize the $100 million set aside for its failed Foxconn Institute for Research in Science and Technology (FIRST) at UW-Madison to acquire the needed intel, if necessary.
“We’ll be launching kringles with innovative new flavors, like red bean paste, taco dip, geoduck, spicy squid and ginseng," he added, "We can even source the ginseng right here in Wisconsin; but we probably won't.”
To meet the projected demand for the innovative new kringle, Foxconn plans to order 300,000 more ovens over the next two years.
There’s even talk of converting the former Northridge Mall into a giant Foxxconn Kringle outlet store. In fact, Willeigh confirmed that Foxconn is currently in talks with the mall's property owners regarding the acquisition of the former shopping center.
If all goes well, kringle production is expected to begin this summer with rollout to follow soon after.
“We know that the world loves sweet things even more than it loves computers, so we believe this will be a deliciously blockbuster approach for us,” Willeigh said.
A statement released this morning by former President Donald Trump referred to the innovative new project as "the eighth wonder of the world ... for real this time.”