With the Sino-U.S. trade war tensions in recent years, manufacturing plants of PCB components have slowly started their plans to diversify production capacity. The severe outbreak of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) pandemic, has resulted in the death toll in the United States becoming the highest in the world, and in view of the catastrophic impact on the economy, the consciousness of hostility against China has increased because of the global spread of NCP. According to reports, the Japanese government plans to appropriate funding to help Japanese companies to relocate from China, while the economic adviser to the White House has also proposed speeding up assistance to American companies to return to the US from China. Furthermore, the US government will subsidize 100% of the cost to move back to the United States. As viewed, the trends of relocation from China as well as not-made-in-China production capacity will likely escalate. In this context, “made-in-Taiwan production capacity” will become relatively more precious. Given this trend, it is hoped that Taiwanese entrepreneurs can place greater investments in Taiwan to increase their production capacity for deployment for greater flexibility for Taiwanese manufacturers in terms of shipment of goods under the Sino-US trade agreement.

 

Difficulty of rigid /flex PCB manufacturing plants

For relocation of manufacturing abroad

 

Despite the fact that the Sino-US trade war has been in full swing in the past two years, it remains quite difficult for PCB manufacturers to move their production capacity to areas outside of China. The main reason for the difficulty in relocation is that the industry supply chain in China is clustered together, which makes it is difficult for a single PCB factory to survive on its own. Besides, there are obstacles to overcome when moving to other regions, such as the unfamiliar language, overseas environment, laws and regulations, and employee culture as well as other integration issues. Also, the other obstacle is that these plants need to seek out Taiwanese management executives to take up such responsibility for relocation.

In addition, though some regions in China have stricter requirements on the PCB industry due to environmental protection factors, there are still different areas in China where industrial clusters can be established. In the early days of the PCB industry, plants were put up in Kunshan and Suzhou, and were later moved to Hubei, in Huangshi, Xiantao, and others. In the future, there will be many more manufacturers establishing their plants in Nantong, Jiangsu, including manufacturers such as Taiflex, PCBUT, and Plotech. Hence, China remains at the top of the list for their new round of investments.

The proportion of overseas production capacity

other than Not-made-in-China remains low

 

Among the Taiwanese PCB manufacturers, Apex-intel is a Taiwanese investment plant. When Apex was first established in Thailand, it cooperated with New Kinpo Group to set up a production base in Thailand. Currently, 100% of its production capacity is outside Thailand, and it is found that only a few manufacturers have moved overseas to set up production capacity in regions other than China. Such cases are still in the minority.

Among them, Zhen Ding-KY, the largest PCB manufacturer in the world and after having firmly rooted itself on the throne of largest greatest PCB factory, it announced that it would expand internationally this year. In fact, a module factory was established in India last year, and the move is considered to be in line with the demands of its major US customers. Furthermore, it further declared the intention to acquire BoardTek earlier this year. In the future, Zhen Ding does not rule out the possibility of looking for suitable sites in Southeast Asia to put up new plants. As for the time being, they are quite optimistic about the production environment in Thailand.

 

As for Unimicron and Hannstarboard, both are also among the top 10 PCB factories in the world and they also have overseas production capacity outside China. For the time being, Unimicron has a Japanese and German plant, while Hannstarboard, operated through its subsidiary GBM, established its Malaysian factory last year and GBM is mainly responsible for the later stage processes.

In addition, both Chin Poon and APCB, manufacturers of auto-board makers, have operations in Thailand, but these plants are still undergoing adjustments and improvement. Hence, they have yet to achieve profitable performance last year.

For assembly and prototyping plants

Necessity of consideration for prioritized relocation

 

Though it’s difficult to relocate rigid and flex PBC plants to overseas regions in order to expand not-made-in-China production capacity, there is relatively greater pressure upon those downstream prototyping and assembly plants for relocation to a third location for development. Actually, since the escalation of the Sino-U.S. trade war in 2018, TSMT’s Indian prototyping plants have benefited from order transfers within the group due to its advantage of geographical location.

After this pandemic subsides, many people are expecting that Sino-U.S. relations might worsen in the future, such that even some US lawmakers have suggested the need to establish their own independent industrial supply chain within the United States as they relocate manufacturing back to the US from China. Therefore, it is feared that prototyping and assembly plants might have to be moved to a third location. Or perhaps, it would be like Zhen Ding and Hannstarboard as they set up prototyping and assembly plants for processing at third locations in order to accommodate client demands for not-made-in-China products.