PCB News - PCB board price increase and LED display impact

First of all, people's awareness of environmental protection has been paid more and more attention in recent years. While people are based on steady economic development, they also have more requirements for environmental protection. Building an "environmentally friendly" society has increasingly become an urgent need for people. The country has also stepped up its efforts to rectify environmental protection in response to the needs of the times. In 2017, my country comprehensively strengthened the environmental protection restrictions on the PCB manufacturing industry. During this investigation, nearly 100 companies were forced to suspend trading for rectification. The "Environmental Protection Tax" implemented in 2018 has also led to an increase in the environmental protection costs of PCB manufacturers.

After the rectification of PCB manufacturers, some manufacturers that did not meet the environmental protection requirements were forced to withdraw from the market. Those fortunately surviving manufacturers also have higher requirements for environmental protection monitoring of raw materials in terms of environmental protection issues.

The increase in environmental protection costs will inevitably lead to an increase in the cost of the upstream industry chain. Among the PCB manufacturers, some small and medium-sized PCB companies were forced to withdraw from the PCB market due to unqualified environmental protection. The original balance of supply and demand in the PCB market was broken, and the short supply of the PCB market would inevitably lead to a direct increase in prices.

In the "Environmental Protection Tax" implemented in 2018, the state has legalized environmental issues in the form of laws, and environmental monitoring of PCB manufacturers will also become a norm, which will also promote the continuous increase of material prices for PCB manufacturers.

Secondly, on June 6, 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued 5G commercial licenses to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Radio and Television. The issuance of 5G commercial licenses marked the first year of 5G commercialization in China. The arrival of the 5G era has brought a huge market blue ocean for consumer electronics, and at the same time the huge demand for copper clad laminates has also been detonated. Copper clad laminate is the basic material for PCB. The rise of the 5G concept will drive the rise in the value of copper clad laminates, which in turn will drive the rise in PCB prices.

Third, the micro-pitch of LED displays has become an important trend in the development of the display industry in the future. In recent years, small-pitch, COB, Mini LED, and Micro LED technologies have continued to mature, and there will be more and more smaller-pitch displays. The development of smaller-pitch LED displays will increase the incremental market for the LED display industry, and the increase in the incremental market will inevitably have a greater demand for PCB boards.

With the development of smaller-pitch displays, traditional PCB boards have been difficult to adapt to the development of smaller-pitch displays, and some packaging manufacturers are also seeking PCBs that are compatible with smaller pitches. The PCB board that is compatible with the smaller pitch will also be very different from the traditional PCB. In terms of process and raw materials, it will also have higher quality requirements than the traditional PCB board, which will also promote the PCB Prices continue to rise.

According to industry insiders, the phased price increase of PCB, for high-end display products such as small and micro-pitch, because the cost of PCB is relatively small, the impact is not large; but channel construction and LED unit board manufacturers should pay attention to the subsequent price Changes in order to develop corresponding response strategies.