Apple Planning to Manufacture High-Tech Data Centre Server Hardware in Arizona

In a move that may somewhat appease President-elect Donald Trump – who has criticized Apple for outsourcing device manufacturing to China – the company is reportedly planning to consolidate production of servers that populate its data centres around the world in Mesa, Arizona.

A notice on Apple’s plans was published Monday by the US Federal Register, stating that the Cupertino company wanted permission from the Foreign-Trade Zones Board to produce finished products in a special zone that exempts the firm from customs duty payments.

“Apple Inc has repurposed the site as a global data command center that will conduct high-tech manufacturing of finished data center cabinets for other data centers,” reads a document filed by Mesa on behalf of Apple in June and made public Monday.

An anonymous source familiar with Apple’s data center operations told Business Insider that the company has been producing servers for its data centres at individual data centre sites but plans to consolidate production at the Mesa facility.

The filing posted Monday notes that production at the facility could include imported materials and components such as “server housing and enclosures” and “routers and network switches.”

Apple has said it is investing more than $2 billion in the facility. The company previously said 150 people would work at the facility, though it’s unclear whether the newly revealed plans to manufacture servers on the site will change that figure.