Copper laminate (CCL) is the core raw material for downstream PCBs/FPC, accounting for more than 40% of the cost of materials and a higher percentage of the cost in high-end PCBs. Laminate end-use development trend is obvious, the high-end market is growing rapidly and higher value-added. In addition to common copper laminates used in home appliances, automobiles and other terminal equipment, according to the different performance needs of terminal applications, high-end copper laminates can be divided into high-frequency, high-speed laminates and high-density interconnector (HDI) with substrates. In response to the high precision, high density, miniaturisation and thinness of electronics technology, IC carrier boards have evolved based on HDI-related technologies and are an upgrade to traditional IC packaging leadframes for all types of chip packaging, representing to some extent the highest level of technology available in the PCB sector. This represents an increase of 45.84% compared to 2020 sales of US$12,896 million. The total sales of halogen-free rigid laminates, which offer stability and environmental benefits and are mainly used in high-frequency, high-speed and mobile applications, will increase by 43.92% to US$4,453 million from US$3,094 million in 2020. According to Prismark, the top 13 companies account for 96% of global halogen-free rigid CCL sales. Among the major halogen-free rigid CCL companies, there are four Taiwanese companies, namely Taikoo Electronics (26%), Nanya Plastics (13%), Lianmao Electronics (13%) and TUC (12%), which are among the top four Taiwanese companies in terms of market share for halogen-free rigid CCL (halogen-free FR-4 + halogen-free non-FR-4) and whose total sales of halogen-free rigid CCL account for Its total sales of halogen-free rigid laminates accounted for 64% of the total sales of halogen-free rigid laminates worldwide. There are two major trends to watch out for:
Trend one: the end product high-frequency high-speed, high-speed copper laminate market growth opportunities in the rigid copper laminate, IC packaging board with copper laminate (i.e. IC carrier board), RF / microwave circuits with copper laminate (i.e. high-frequency copper laminate) and high-speed digital circuits with copper laminate (i.e. high-speed copper laminate) three categories of special copper laminate, belongs to the production and manufacturing process technical difficulties and downstream applications require high performance of high-end They are high-end laminates with high technical difficulty in manufacturing and performance requirements for downstream applications. According to Prismark’s May 2022 survey of global laminate operations, total sales of the three special rigid laminates reached US$4,652 million in 2021, representing a year-on-year sales increase of 18.4%, up 2.9 percentage points from 2020. Of these, sales of IC carriers will be $1.205 billion, up 15.4% from 2021; sales of high-frequency laminates will increase by 9.8% year-on-year; sales of high-speed laminates (halogen and halogen-free high-speed laminates combined) will increase by 21.5% year-on-year, with sales of high-speed halogen-free laminates increasing by 42.2% year-on-year, and sales of high-speed halogen-free CCL will increase significantly from 2020 to 2021. Sales of high-speed halogen-free CCLs have increased significantly since 2020, with a sales volume growth rate of 12.0% in 2021, indicating that the market demand for high-end high-speed halogen-free CCLs will continue to increase in 2021. The market for high speed laminates is more than twice the size of IC carrier boards and more than five times the size of high frequency laminates. According to Prismark’s survey statistics, in 2021, the global production of three major categories of rigid special laminate enterprises, a certain scale of enterprises, a total of 18, these 18 enterprises of the three major categories of special rigid laminate sales accounted for about 95% of the total global sales of such laminates, sales accounted for about 90% of the total global sales of such laminates. Among the above three main types of special laminate manufacturers, there are five companies in Taiwan, China, which account for 40.2% of the total sales of the three types of special rigid laminates, including TUC 14%, UMC 12%, TIGO 10%, Nanya Plastics 4%, Teng Hui 0.2%; Japanese companies account for 30% of the sales of the three types of special rigid laminates (Showa Denko 10%, Panasonic 9%, Mitsubishi) Japanese companies accounted for 30% of sales (Showa Denko 10%, Matsushita Electric 9%, Mitsubishi Gas Chemical 7%, AGG 3%, Sumitomo Denki 1%); US companies accounted for 9% of sales of the three major categories of special rigid laminates (DuPont 7%, Isola 2%), all of which were higher than the combined sales of the four domestic companies in mainland China (7.3%). The two segments of the CCL industry, high frequency and high speed, are also very concentrated due to high technical barriers. In the high-speed CCL sector, the world’s top-ranked manufacturer is Japan’s Matsushita Electric with a 35% share, while Taiwan’s Taikou Electronics, Lian Mao Electronics and TUC have a 20%, 20% and 13% share respectively. In the field of high frequency CCL, the world’s top-ranked manufacturer is Rogers of the USA, with a share of 55%, while the second-ranked manufacturer is Parker Electrochemicals of the USA, with a share of 22%, accounting for a total of 77%. The main example of this is the high-speed laminate sector, where the main application area for high-speed CCL is data processing centres. According to Cisco data, global data centre IP traffic will reach 20.6ZB in 2021, with a CAGR of 25% from 2016 to 2021. The three main devices in data centres are servers, networks (switches, routers) and storage, which use a large number of high-speed PCBs, i.e. high-speed CCL, and servers, as the largest part of data centre capital expenditure, are the most representative. From the related industry chain, higher technical standards for servers have higher requirements for CCL and PCB. PCB and its key raw material, copper clad board, as the key substrate for carrying various alignments in servers, need to improve the corresponding performance to adapt to server upgrades. Specifically: 1) the number of PCB layers increased from below 10 layers to more than 16 layers, the higher the number of layers, the greater the technical difficulty; 2) PCB board transmission rate increased, the server platform for each upgrade generation, the transmission rate doubled; 3) high frequency and high speed work, PCB board using Very Low Loss or Ultra Low Loss level laminate material production; 4) low The iteration of servers has a significant impact on both the demand for technology upgrades and the growth in total demand for laminates. From a laminate technology upgrade perspective, comparing the latest Intel Eagle Stream platform with its predecessor, it is clear that the upgrade of laminates for server platforms is at a critical transition from one rung of the ladder to another. Other vendors in the laminate industry will release benchmark products with the same basic technology level, and in recent years, vendors in Taiwan and China have gradually accelerated the rate of technology upgrades and iterations for high-end products. From the perspective of high-end laminate demand, it can be seen that server iterations mean a significant rise in the number of layers of board required for processing, with high-performance servers expanding their demand for high-speed laminates。
Trend two, HDI motherboards are mainly divided into first-order, second-order, third-order and Any layer HDI, with gradually shrinking feature sizes and increasing manufacturing difficulties. The size of the features is gradually reduced and the manufacturing difficulty is gradually increased. The mainboards of Apple’s mobile phones have been using Any layer HDI for the first time since the iPhone 4S, and Huawei’s flagship series in recent years have mainly used Any layer HDI, for example For example, Huawei’s P30 series motherboards are divided into Main PCB and RF PCB, both using Any layer HDI, and the Mate20 and Mate30 series are also using Any layer HDI motherboards. 2018 global HDI production value reached $9.222 billion, of which the consumer electronics mobile phone terminals accounted for the highest proportion, about 66%, and the computer PC industry accounted for the next highest proportion, about 14%. The consumer electronics industry has become the largest application market for HDI, accounting for approximately 66% of the total. Increasing miniaturisation of electronic devices, a rapid consumer inclination towards smart devices, significant growth in consumer electronics and the adoption of automotive safety measures are all factors that are driving the market’s growth. As the communication standard is upgraded to 5G, the use of RF chips, passive components and BTB connectors will increase, and a wide range of low-end and mid-range handset manufacturers with a large number of users will adapt to the technology iteration by increasing the motherboard area, using double-layer board structures or higher-order HDI baseboards, which will in turn significantly increase the demand for HDI. In addition to the expansion of HDI substrates and the increase in the number of application orders, the number of components to be carried on PCBs is increasing but the size of the requirements is decreasing in order to meet the trend of miniaturisation and functional diversification of flagship mobile devices. The process constraints of traditional HDI make it difficult to meet the requirements, and SLPs, with more stacked layers and smaller line widths and spacing, can carry more functional modules. Compared to HDI, SLPs can reduce the line width/line pitch from 40/40μm to 30/30μm. It is also one of the highest levels of technology in the entire laminate sector. In terms of market size, according to Prismark data, the IC packaging substrate industry will grow by 19% in 2021, reaching a market size of US$12.2 billion, with a CAGR of 9.7% from 2020 to 2025, and the overall market size will reach US$16.2 billion, making it the fastest growing PCB sub-sector.