Kingboard Laminates Raises Prices for the Fifth Time This Year, Cumulative Increase Exceeds 50%
0xBroomberg
Kingboard Laminates announced an immediate price hike on copper-clad laminates on July 6 — its fifth increase this year, pushing the cumulative rise past 50% as AI-driven demand sends cost pressure all the way back to the most upstream raw materials.
How much went up, and on what?
FR-4 thick boards (over 1.3 mm) rose 15%; CEM-1 and 22F products rose 10%; prepreg (PP — the bonding layer between circuit-board layers) rose 15%.
Copper-foil processing fees also climbed: products at 52 µm and below added ¥5/kg; 70 µm products added ¥8/kg.
This means → the hike is not limited to finished laminates — every link from base materials to processing fees is repricing.
Why five rounds in one year with no sign of stopping?
Kingboard's stated reason: sustained demand has tightened supply of electronic-grade fiberglass cloth and copper foil, driving costs sharply higher.
The demand engine is AI — since late 2025, high-performance computing and large-language-model applications have pulled up demand for high-end PCBs (printed circuit boards — the "base plate" every chip is soldered onto), and CCL is the core substrate of every PCB.
In plain terms = AI servers need more and better circuit boards; boards need more CCL; CCL needs more fiberglass cloth and copper foil — every layer is fighting for materials.
What is happening to fiberglass cloth and copper foil upstream?
Electronic-grade fiberglass cloth went through multiple price rounds in H1 2026 and is now in a phase of frequent repricing.
High-end copper foil is even tighter: long equipment lead times and constrained capacity expansion keep HVLP, RTF, and carrier copper foil in persistent shortage.
This reflects a bottleneck that is not cyclical — physical capacity cannot keep pace with demand, and even the equipment to build new capacity is backlogged.
Is the pace of hikes accelerating?
In late May Kingboard had just announced a 10% CCL hike and a 20% prepreg hike — barely six weeks before this latest round.
This means → the interval between increases has compressed from quarterly to monthly, signaling the supply–demand gap is widening, not closing.
What does this mean for downstream PCB makers?
CCL is the core substrate of PCBs and a major share of manufacturing cost.
The key question: can these costs be passed through to end customers? If PCB makers can pass them on, margin impact stays limited; if they cannot, H2 profit margins face meaningful compression.
In plain terms = Kingboard's price hikes are a certainty — whether PCB makers can protect their profits depends entirely on their pricing power downstream.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.