Benefiting from the three major areas of 5G, AI, and automotive, the PCB market will remain hot over the next three years. Among them, high-frequency and high-speed 5G communication is considered the basis for activating multi-application development in other fields. The industry also expects to be officially commercialized as early as 2020. Many manufacturers are actively expanding their production capacity and equipment technology to meet the market demand. The new technology is anticipated to take the lead in grabbing business opportunities.

 

Taiwan Union Technology is benefiting from the stable demand for high frequency and Netcom products. For future 5G communication products, the company is adding NT$500 million in capital expenditure to expand its Hsinchu plant which is expected to start mass production in Q2 of next year. Meanwhile, it will also take advantage of traditional PCB products to cross into the IC carrier boards domain with the hope of injecting new strength into the company’s operation.
 

Elite Material is benefiting from the arrival of peak season, in which customers are stocking up raw materials. At a recent corporate meeting, the company expressed optimism about the settlement effect of Hubei PCB industry and expected to increase capital expenditure to NT$1.772 billion to build a new plant at Huangshi in Hubei and an R&D center at Kunshan to increase production capacity and mass produce 5G materials. The scheduled monthly production capacity reaches 600,000 sheets of copper foil substrates.
 

In recent years, ITEQ Corp. has focused on the production of 3S products for the applications of Netcom base stations, servers, and storage equipment. Following the increasing number of servers and 5G applications, the company indicated a few days ago that it would expand its production in Jiangxi. The monthly production capacity of 600,000 sheets is scheduled for Q2 of next year to target the Netcom products market.
 

According to the industry, to meet the characteristics of high-frequency and high-speed 5G, low-loss, big data carrier, etc., the future will require some changes, regardless of the front-end processes or terminal services. The 5G requirements for components also need to be significantly upgraded. Not only will the material specifications of PCBs become stricter, but the substrate processing will also become more difficult. By improving the process technology, the entry threshold will also become higher. The market is predicted to become more concentrated in the future, and the industry will gradually move towards the trend of grand development. (News source: Commercial Times).