In the last 6 months, due to raw material cost rise up tremendously, CCL (copper clad laminate) price has been increasing largely.
In the past November, CCL manufacturers has started again their "attack of price increase notice letter" with a range around 10%. It is the 3rd time for price increasing in the last half year and major CCL manufacturers are all involved with it(Kingboard, Jinbao, honghai, etc).
The major factor of course is their purchasing raw material cost rise up, so they must increase their selling price to keep own profits, yet to transfer the cost to the next chain of the industry. And the hot end market has let the PCB manufacturers, along with PCB assebmly factories, accepted and increased their products/service price too.
Logic behind the market
The continous three price rise in the last 6 months was mainly due to raw material purchasing cost go up. The raw material for making CCL is copper foil (30~-50%), epoxy resin (30%) and fiber glass, etc.
The price increase of epoxy resin, copper and fiber glass this year has been top of a long time. The cathode copper price has break 50K RMB when in July. If we only watch back 3 months ago, the copper price is still the lowest level during the last 4 years. Today (2020-12-07), the cathode copper price is staying at 57260 RMB/Ton.
Besides the copper, epoxy resin has reached the top point of the last ten years, which made the epoxy resin manufacturer has limited their production capability while hoping to keep the trend last long!
Fiber glass price, also run to its highest point of the last ten years in the 3rd season of 2020. Manufacturers has started to adjust up their price since August to over 5000RMB/Ton.
Readers will ask, the raw materials manufacturers keep increasing price, its next chain of the industry and the end market may not buy from them or hold their needs so to push them reduce price again. This is a good way, however, this time the story is the other way.
Hot market of 5G opens a blue sea
CCL typically are used in PCB manufacturing and PCB has been called the mother of electronic components, which means PCB is essential for almost all electronic devices. So CCL has been used in numerous industries such as automotive, consumer electronics, telecomunications, etc.
Automotive electronics
Due to the COVID, the automotive market this first half year has been freezing, and when it comes to July the market is warming up again and speed up quickly. According to public numbers, in China 1.91million vehicles were sold in September with a rise of 7.3%. For new energy car the numbers are even more shining, went up 99.6% as wholesale numbers.
This has a large impact on CCL usage, because new energy car has a big load of using CCL, some association even indicates that in 2022, this industry will generate a market of 54.4 Billion USD for PCBs that are used.
Besides, the application of 5G technology has been the biggest engine for CCL consuming. The 5G base station will be 1.1-1.5 times more than 4G era and the actual number will be 10.55 million stations (global) and 5.98million (China). And for a single station the square used are doubled than before, this has added up the market size again and again.
As we see the hot market needs, we believe the CCL price will not come back in a short time and the top CCL manufacturers and PCB manufacturers will benefits from it mostly.
You are welcome to send your PCB inquiry to us at inquiry@cheemau.com before the price going up to the next level!
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