In October 2020, Patently Apple posted a report titled "Foxlink, who is opening a new Factory in India to make Cables for Apple Products, had its Plant Sabotaged by a Chinese National." The report noted at the time that Foxlink had said in a statement that a company engineer was caught on internal surveillance video this month damaging automation equipment at the new Indian plant near Chennai. The suspect is a Chinese national, and the incident was reported to local police and Chinese authorities.

Today it's being reported that Apple supplier Foxlink has halted production at its assembly facility in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh after a massive fire led part of the building to collapse on Monday, two local government officials told Reuters.

Foxlink, a unit of Taiwan's Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co Ltd, makes cables for iPhone chargers. It set up a factory in Andhra in 2020.

The fire broke out in the afternoon and damaged roughly 50% of the machinery at the factory, said J Ramanaiah, who leads the Fire Services Department for Tirupati district in the state.

The business impact on Apple was not immediately clear and the root cause of the incident was unknown

The fire is now under control and there were no casualties, said Ramanaiah. He showed Reuters photos and videos of the factory blaze with charred machinery inside the plant and groups of fire fighters trying to douse the fire. The videos and photos showed huge plumes of smoke rising from the plant.

"Management has conveyed to us that they estimate a loss of roughly 1 billion rupees ($12 million) from the incident," Ramanaiah said. For more, read the full Reuters report.

It will be interesting to learn of the cause behind the fire in the coming days or weeks so that we could know if this was an accident or yet another case of sabotage.