Intel to move part of production from Malaysia to Vietnam: media

HO CHI MINH CITY -- US-based chipmaker Intel Corporation will relocate a part of its production facility in Malaysia to Vietnam as well as China in an effort to cut labor costs, local online newspaper Tuoi Tre (Youth) News reported Friday.

The relocation of the Intel plant in Kulim to facilities in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City and China's Chengdu will result in the layoff of 600 Malaysian workers at the plant.

Many technology corporations like Samsung, LG, and Microsoft have also been moving production bases to Vietnam due to its cheap labor and the strategic location of the country as a gateway to the Southeast Asian region.

Intel Products Vietnam CEO Sherry Boger in November last year announced that the company would install a second production line to manufacture computers' CPUs at its Ho Chi Minh City factory, part of Intel's effort to expand the production of its flagship products in the Southeast Asian country.

Four months earlier, Sherry Boger had said that 80 percent of the Intel semiconductor chips used in computers around the world would be made at its plant in Ho Chi Minh City by August 2015.

Meanwhile, the fourth generation Haswell CPUs would be produced at the plant in the Saigon Hi-Tech Park in the city's District 9 by October last year, Boger told local media then.

The Vietnamese plant is making two of Intel's flagship products, the SOC (system on a chip), used for tablets and smartphones, and the Haswell CPU after the chip-making titan began its operations at the Saigon Hi-Tech Park in 2010, Boger told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper in July last year.