PCB material shortage 2026: glass cloth, copper foil and supply by board type

Printed circuit board makers spent 2026 competing for materials. Kingboard Laminates reported that a shortage of electronic glass fabric forced some laminate producers to partially suspend production in the first half of the year.^[1] A circuit board is a different product from a microchip, and the shortage sits in board materials: glass cloth, copper foil, resin and the laminates made from them. This note sets out what is short, what is not, and whether supply is sufficient by board type, with evidence to mid-October 2026.

Key points

• A printed circuit board is a laminated panel of glass cloth, resin and copper foil. IC package substrates use finer grades of the same inputs and share the shortage.^[2]
• Specialty glass cloth is the tightest input: Nittobo holds about 90% of T-glass supply, and its new Fukushima capacity starts in early 2027.^[3][4]
• The squeeze has reached standard FR-4: laminate lead times rose from a few days to about four weeks, and Kingboard raised prices in 10 rounds from 2025 to July 2026.^[5][6]
• HVLP copper foil is short, and LME copper averaged about 44% more in the third quarter of 2026 than a year earlier.^[7][8]
• MPBxChange reads mainstream boards as available at higher prices, while AI-grade boards and IC substrates face allocation until new capacity runs in 2027 and 2028.^[9]
• Thailand is adding laminate, prepreg and glass-fabric plants from late 2026 to 2028; high-end materials are still imported.^[10][11]

How a printed circuit board differs from a microchip

A microchip is a silicon die on which a wafer fab builds transistors and wiring at nanometre scale. A printed circuit board is a laminated panel of glass-reinforced resin and patterned copper that holds packaged chips, passive components and connectors and wires them together. A PCB plant laminates, drills and plates; it makes no transistors.

The IC package substrate sits between the two: a small, fine-line board inside the chip package that fans the die's dense connections out to a pitch a PCB can accept. Low-expansion glass cloth goes mainly into substrates, and low-dielectric cloth into the board layers beneath AI chips.^[2] Counterpoint Research estimates that an advanced AI chip uses roughly ten times the ABF build-up film of a traditional PC chip.^[12]

The numbers drawn in copper mark the layers reported short in 2026: the package substrate, the copper foil, and the glass cloth inside every prepreg and core.

Glass cloth is about 19% of laminate cost, copper foil 42% and resin 26%, according to TrendForce.^[13] For the finished board, Victory Giant Technology told Reuters that copper is around 60% of raw material cost.^[14]

AI hardware and demand for board materials

A joint analysis by STARTEAM GLOBAL and Würth Elektronik puts the layer count of AI server boards at three to five times that of conventional designs.^[9] Confidee, a Norwegian PCB supplier, estimates that advanced boards need roughly four times the raw material of standard boards.^[15]

Demand forecasts for 2026 differ: Prismark projected 12.5% growth to US$95.8 billion, as reported by Reuters, and a TPCA and THPCA report US$113.7 billion, up 23.1%.^[14][16] Both point to double-digit growth.

Glass-fibre cloth: specialty grades short, standard grades displaced

New capacity begins in 2027. Nittobo's new building at its Fukushima site, an investment of about ¥15 billion, is planned to start production in January to March 2027.^[4] The company expects capacity in the year to March 2029 to reach three times the level of the year to March 2026, and plans no further T-glass price increases for now.^[17] Second sources are forming: Nan Ya Plastics says it will weave 20% of Nittobo's specialty fabric by 2027, and Kingboard is building eight kilns for low-Dk, low-CTE and quartz glass yarn, two due in the second half of 2026.^[18][1]

Until then, supply is concentrated. TrendForce estimates Nittobo's share at about 90% of T-glass and 60% to 70% of NER-glass, with no new capacity before mid-2027 at the earliest.^[3] Nikkei, as reported by TrendForce, said NVIDIA, Microsoft, Google and Amazon had booked most of Nittobo's premium cloth capacity for 2026.^[17]

Standard cloth is short as well. Kingboard reports that capacity shifted to AI products, causing severe shortages of traditional glass yarn and fabric, and that high-performance weaving looms have become virtually impossible to source; its 70,000-tonne-a-year yarn plant, commissioned in June 2026, is meant to ease the yarn shortage.^[1] STARTEAM GLOBAL and Würth Elektronik expect no significant easing in glass fabric before 2028.^[9]

MPBxChange reads this as two linked shortages. Specialty cloth is short because few makers produce it at qualified yields. Standard cloth is short because looms and furnaces moved to specialty grades, which is how the squeeze reached FR-4.

Copper foil: HVLP grades lead the shortage

Low-profile foil capacity rises in steps. Mitsui Kinzoku plans VSP foil capacity of 1,400 tonnes a month in Taiwan and Malaysia by fiscal 2030, and a new Malaysian plant from 2031 for a group total of 2,600 tonnes a month by fiscal 2033.^[19] Co-Tech expects HVLP3 and HVLP4 capacity to rise from about 100 to 150 tonnes a month in the second half of 2026; its new plant starts in the first quarter of 2027 and reaches 600 tonnes a month when all four lines run in the fourth quarter.^[7] Kingboard plans 21,000 tonnes a year of RTF and HVLP foil from the third quarter of 2027.^[1]

Current supply is short. Co-Tech says a gap in high-end HVLP4 foil has begun to open.^[7] Kingboard reports an overall copper foil shortage, driven by thick foil for AI hardware and by low-loss RTF and HVLP grades.^[1] Reuters reported copper foil prices up as much as 30% in early 2026.^[14]

The World Bank's LME copper average was US$14,114 a tonne in July to September 2026, against US$9,808 a year earlier, about 44% higher.^[8]

Copper rose in every quarter from the third quarter of 2025 to the third quarter of 2026, while gold peaked in the first quarter of 2026 and then eased.^[8] Copper is around 60% of a finished board's raw material cost and copper foil about 42% of laminate cost.^[14][13] MPBxChange reads the copper line as one of the drivers beneath the laminate price rounds of 2026.

Laminate and prepreg: price rounds and longer lead times

Laminate capacity is growing, though more slowly than high-end demand. Foreign brokers cited by TechNews expect global CCL capacity to grow 20% to 30% in 2026 and 30% to 40% in 2027, short of PCB makers' expansion plans.^[20] Panasonic Industry starts a new MEGTRON line in Guangzhou in April 2027 and plans to double MEGTRON capacity within five years.^[21] EMC and TUC are ramping output with order visibility to 2028.^[13]

Prices moved in rounds. Kingboard Laminates had raised prices in 10 rounds from 2025 to July 2026, with single rounds of up to 20%, according to China Securities Journal.^[6] Its August 2026 notice raised thin-cloth prepreg (below 7628 style) by 20%, and FR-4 laminate and thick-cloth prepreg by 10%.^[22] Resonac raised all laminate and prepreg prices by 30% from March 2026.^[23] Panasonic Industry raised glass-epoxy multilayer laminate by 30% and MEGTRON and XPEDION laminate by 20% from May 2026.^[24] South Korea's CCL import price reached US$20,728 a tonne in March, up 74.5% on a year earlier.^[13]

Lead times lengthened. ILFA, a German board maker, reported in March that FR-4 laminate lead times had gone from a few days to about four weeks, and advanced laminates up to 140 days.^[5] Confidee reported in August that some laminate suppliers now confirm prices only on delivery.^[25] A Daeduck Electronics executive told Reuters that waiting times for epoxy resin had stretched from three weeks to 15, and Goldman Sachs analysts cited in the same report said PCB prices rose as much as 40% in April from March.^[14]

IC substrates: T-glass, BT and ABF supply

Substrate capacity is being added for 2027 and 2028. Ibiden plans about ¥500 billion of investment over fiscal 2026 to 2028, and its AI substrate capacity is expected to reach about 2.5 times the current level by fiscal 2028.^[26] Mitsubishi Gas Chemical's Thai subsidiary doubled its capacity for BT materials for semiconductor packages with an additional plant announced complete in November 2025.^[27]

Counterpoint Research expected substrate makers to raise prices 3% to 5% a quarter in the first half of 2026, with greenfield capacity arriving only in 2027.^[12] Liberty Times reported in July that ABF substrate prices would keep rising in the second half.^[28] Resonac and Mitsubishi Gas Chemical raised laminate and related material prices by more than 30%.^[13] MPBxChange reads T-glass as the pacing item for substrates through 2027.

Drill bits, gold and other inputs

Drill capacity is expanding: analysts cited by Commercial Times expect Topoint's capacity at the end of 2028 to double that of end-2026.^[29] The paper reported in July 2026 that high-end drill bits stayed tight, while tungsten powder spot prices had fallen about 50% from their first-quarter peak.^[29]

Gold, used in ENIG finishes, averaged US$4,268 an ounce in July to September 2026, about 23% above a year earlier and below the first-quarter average of US$4,876.^[8]

Supply by board type

MPBxChange reads supply as sufficient for mainstream boards at higher prices and longer lead times, and short for AI-grade boards and IC substrates until the capacity below is running.

New capacity and when it arrives

Relief arrives in steps: glass yarn and fabric lines from late 2026, specialty cloth and HVLP foil through 2027, laminate plants in Thailand from late 2026 to 2028, and AI substrate capacity by 2028.^{[1][4][7][10][26]}

What it means for PCB plants in Thailand

Local supply is arriving. The BOI approved the TUC, Doosan Electro-Materials and Fulltech Fiber Glass plants listed above, the first two for CCL and prepreg and the third for glass fabric; TUC's output is designed for AI servers.^[10] ITEQ's Thai plant already has capacity for about 300,000 laminate sheets a month.^[30] Mitsubishi Gas Chemical makes BT materials in Thailand.^[27]

Board output keeps growing. TPCA puts Thailand's PCB production value at US$5.06 billion in 2025 and projects US$6.09 billion in 2026.^[33] The BOI counts PCB investment applications of US$9.85 billion across 224 projects from 2023 to mid-2026.^[34] The MPBxChange register lists 39 PCB plants in Thailand, of which 33 are operating and 6 are under construction.

Materials remain mostly imported. In a survey for a TPCA and THPCA report on Thailand, 46% of firms sourced less than 20% of inputs locally, and local material supply was the most cited gap, at 35%.^[16] Nikkei Asia reported in 2025 that PCB makers in Thailand import most equipment and materials, and all high-end materials.^[11] Confidee told Evertiq that factories that moved to Thailand often still source raw materials from China.^[15]

MPBxChange reads this as Thai plants drawing on the same allocated global supply as plants elsewhere, with added transit time. Local laminate plants shorten the chain for CCL and prepreg from late 2026; specialty glass yarn, T-glass and HVLP foil will still come from Japan, Taiwan and China through 2027.

Ordering boards from Thailand

Mainstream FR-4 orders for consumer, industrial and automotive programmes are exposed mainly through price and lead time. High-layer-count server and switch boards on low-loss laminate and HVLP foil, and HDI boards on thin prepreg, carry the most supply risk. Questions to put to a plant:

1. Which laminate brand and grade is quoted, and is it under allocation?
2. Which alternates are qualified to the same IPC-4101 specification sheet, and must the customer approve them?
3. How long is the quote valid, and is there a copper or material surcharge clause?
4. Are the laminate and prepreg in stock, reserved, or still to be bought?
5. Can the finish move from ENIG to OSP where the design allows?
6. For AI-grade boards, which glass style and foil grade are specified, and when is their delivery confirmed?

Indicators to watch

• Production start at Nittobo's new Fukushima building, planned for early 2027.^[4]
• Kingboard's price notices for FR-4 laminate and prepreg.^[22]
• Ramp-up of the TUC and ITEQ laminate plants in Thailand.^[20][30]
• Monthly copper and gold averages in the World Bank Pink Sheet.^[8]
• Co-Tech's new HVLP lines from the first quarter of 2027.^[7]

Data and method

This note draws on company filings, price notices and investor material, World Bank commodity data, BOI announcements, industry association data and trade press in English, Chinese and Japanese, all opened on 15 October 2026. Figures are as reported by each source; broker and analyst estimates are labelled as such. Interpretation is MPBxChange analysis.