Apple supplier Goertek says vice-president leaving company just days after he sounded alarm on supply chain exodus from China

Goertek, one of Apple’s largest acoustic products suppliers, said its vice-president Kazuyoshi Yoshinaga is leaving the company, in a surprise move that comes just days after his remarks about Apple suppliers exiting China made headlines.

In a stock exchange filing on Tuesday, Shenzhen-listed Goertek said Yoshinaga was leaving for “personal reasons”, without providing details. The statement did not mention his recent comments about the supply chain, and there is no evidence to show that his resignation was related to the fact that he painted a gloomy picture for the future of the Chinese manufacturing sector.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Yoshinaga was quoted as saying that Apple suppliers, including Goertek, have been moving manufacturing capacity out of China faster than observers had anticipated as US-China relations continue to deteriorate, laying bare the fact that China is losing some of its supply chain dominance to India and Vietnam.

Goertek and Yoshinaga did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Yoshinaga submitted his resignation on Tuesday and it came into effect immediately, according to the corporate statement. He does not own any shares of Goertek and will not have any role in affiliated Goertek entities after the resignation, the company added.

China’s stringent Covid-19 restrictions and intensified US-China tech rivalry have rattled Apple’s supply chain over the last three years. Cracks have started to appear in the sophisticated supply chain that took the US tech giant decades to build, as companies from Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group to China’s Goertek and Luxshare Precision Industry Co increase their investments in India and Vietnam, two of the largest beneficiaries of a realignment in the global supply chain.