If you've bought PCBs recently, you've likely felt the pressure of rising prices.
On July 7, Xin'yu Mulinsen Electronics, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mulinsen, announced a 10-15% price increase on its full line of PCB products. This is its third price hike in just one month, following a 20% increase on June 12 and another 10% on June 17. On the same day, Kingboard Laminates, a major CCL manufacturer, issued its sixth price increase notice of the year, raising FR-4 products by 15%.
This is no longer a periodic adjustment. A structural supply-demand imbalance is propagating through the entire supply chain.
Where Does It Start? Three Fires Burning at Once
The First Fire: Electronic Glass Fabric Gets "Bottlenecked"
Upstream of PCB is CCL; upstream of CCL is electronic glass fabric (glass cloth). The core equipment for producing electronic glass fabric—Toyota weaving machines—now has a global delivery lead time of 18-24 months, with orders booked through 2028. When equipment availability constrains capacity, expansion is limited.
In the first half of this year, Taiwan's Fu Chiao Industrial raised prices twice, and starting July 1, its standard E-glass cloth rose by 30% while its low-Dk cloth for AI and high-speed applications rose by 15%. Industry consensus holds that this price rally could extend through the end of the year, with elasticity potentially exceeding market expectations.
The Second Fire: HVLP Copper Foil Supply is Highly Concentrated
The high-end copper foil market is dominated by a handful of Japanese suppliers, including Mitsui, who command the majority of HVLP capacity. High technical barriers and long capacity expansion cycles mean that, with AI server demand surging, supply-side constraints will keep the supply-demand gap wide. Some suppliers have already seen their full-year 2026 output locked up by major customers since late 2025.
The Third Fire: Geopolitical Conflict Blocks Resin Supply
In April of this year, geopolitical conflict in the Middle East directly disrupted the global chemical supply chain, causing a shortage and price spike in epoxy resins and other basic chemicals. This coincided with constraints on copper and tungsten supply from tighter environmental oversight and declining ore grades.
The combined effect of these three fires is a cascading price increase: glass cloth → CCL → PCB → end products, amplifying at each step.
The Transmission Chain: From Materials to PCBs, Adding at Each Step
In PCB costs, raw materials account for about 60%, with CCL and prepreg as the two largest cost items, together exceeding 40%. When CCL prices rise, PCB manufacturers have little bargaining power, and major suppliers pass on costs uniformly to all their downstream customers.
Here's the picture:
In its price increase notice, Kingboard Laminates also warned: "Supply will tighten further in Q3 and Q4; even with prepayment, we cannot guarantee prices".
Why Is the Supply Side So "Rigid"?
This price rally is not a short-term supply-demand fluctuation—structural constraints on the supply side are becoming entrenched:
- Equipment bottlenecks: Toyota weaving machines are booked through 2028, constraining high-end glass cloth capacity.
- Long certification cycles: HVLP copper foil has high technical barriers, and domestic suppliers cannot quickly establish effective capacity.
- AI demand "siphoning" high-end capacity: AI servers require boards with higher layer counts and material grades, consuming large amounts of high-end CCL and glass cloth.
- Yield loss: The layer count in high-end MLCCs has risen from 50-100 layers in consumer products to over 500 layers, with production cycles extending from about 27 days to over 50 days. A similar effect applies to high-layer-count PCBs—producing one AI server backplane consumes multiple times the capacity of a standard board.
PCB Expansion: Apparent Abundance, Real Scarcity
In 2026, Chinese PCB manufacturers are ramping up investment. Victory Giant Technology's Q1 capital expenditure reached RMB 3.6 billion, up nearly five times year-over-year. WUS Printed Circuit's Thailand facility has entered commercial production, and its domestic RMB 4.3 billion AI chip supporting project is expected to begin trial production in the second half of 2026. Shennan Circuits plans to raise RMB 4.88 billion for its Wuxi AI computing project.
But high-end capacity ramps much slower than expected. The typical ramp-up period for new high-end PCB lines is 12-18 months, while complex AI-server-grade HDI products often require over 24 months.
Guo Tao, an angel investor and AI expert, noted: "Amid the current industry-wide expansion, effective high-end capacity that can match AI server and optical module orders accounts for less than 20% of total new capacity. The majority of new investment remains concentrated in conventional low-to-mid-tier PCBs".
What Does This Mean for Hardware Engineers?
Costs are cascading. From glass cloth to CCL to PCBs, every layer is rising. Your next batch of boards is likely to cost more than your last.
Lead times are extending. Tight high-end material supply means longer lead times for CCL, copper foil, and other core materials.
Suppliers are "cherry-picking" customers. Top manufacturers prioritize AI orders; small-to-medium batch orders are being squeezed out of production lines.
Advanced planning is becoming more critical. When prepayment no longer secures pricing, locking in long-term costs becomes increasingly difficult.
The Bottom Line
This PCB price rally is not a one-time market fluctuation. It is driven by three converging forces: explosive AI demand, rigid supply-side constraints on raw materials, and equipment delivery bottlenecks—a structural pricing cycle. Glass cloth weaving machines booked through 2028, six rounds of CCL price hikes in a year, and PCB manufacturers raising prices three times in a month—none of these will ease quickly.
For hardware engineers and procurement managers, this means: material selection and capacity planning are becoming critical. Advanced planning, capacity locking, and building alternative solutions may be more valuable than watching real-time quotes.
AnyPCBA, founded in 2011, focuses on small-to-medium batch PCB manufacturing and PCBA assembly. In an environment of widespread supply chain tightness, we offer material selection consulting and flexible capacity coordination.
👉 AnyPCBA website: https://www.anypcba.com/
Small-to-medium batch PCB & PCBA | 5–5,000 pieces | Prototype to Production
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