Apple supplier ordered to shut China plant on environmental concerns

As the Japan earthquake and tsunami showed, supply chain disruptions could come in all shapes and sizes. Here’s a new risk for the technology industry: China is getting serious about tightening its environmental regulations. In an emergency announcement, Taiwan’s Catcher Technology, one of the world’s biggest makers of metal casings for notebook PCs, said it had been ordered to close part of its plant in China’s Suzhou province by regulators, after local residents complained of bad odors generated by the plant. Few outside of the technology industry will have heard of Catcher, but many consumers globally will be familiar with the sleek, uni-body casing of Apple’s Macbook Air and Macbook Pro laptops – both made by Catcher, according to analysts. Catcher said the shutdown will impact October sales by a fifth, assuming plant improvement works are completed and approved by regulators by the end of the month. The company had sales of T$21.8bn ($725 million) last year, with analysts expecting an increase to T$37.1bn this year.