By Dieter Weiss, Founder, in4ma
The electronics industry has experienced stable growth over the last 50 years. No machine or industrial plant is without electronics and even LED lamps today contain a circuit board. Accordingly, the global market (on a global level = production volume) for printed circuit boards, which is recorded by the global electronics association WECC, has grown continuously (Figure 1).
The greatest growth rates were achieved in the 1980s. The numbers shown in red represent the production volume of printed circuit boards in Europe. If you might initially think that the numbers are stable, this is only for representation.
If you look at European circuit board production as a share of the global market, you can see the problem more clearly (Figure 2).
While the European printed circuit board industry still defended global market shares of 15-20% until the year 2000 and was able to increase sales to over USD 6 billion in the mid-1990s, sales and market share fell continuously from the year 2000 onwards.
In Germany, the circuit board industry founded VdL e.V. in 1988 in order to better defend itself against the already significantly lower prices of circuit boards from the Far East. However, this was of little help, as the Ministry of Economic Affairs saw this as a normal development in a global market. The Chinese circuit board manufacturers focused primarily on large series and large OEMs such as Bosch and Siemens switched to China with flying colors, even if this was still associated with considerable quality risks in the early 1990s.
But the Chinese are also learning and production volumes in Europe have continuously declined since 2000. By the end of the first decade of the new millennium, production volumes in Europe had halved, while the global market continued to grow. This meant that the global market share of printed circuit board production was halved. This marked the beginning of the great death of many previously well-known circuit board manufacturers in Europe: ISL in the UK, Exacta Circuits in the UK, Fuba Printed Circuits in 2009, Ruwel GmbH in 2009, Melchert Elektronik in 2009, Lare Cozzi in Italy, Greule Circuit Boards in 2013, Brockstedt, Mommers Printed Circuits in 2019, Schoeller Electronic Systems, Fela Circuit Boards and many more. PPE in Schopfheim, which filed for bankruptcy in 2003, was taken over by Würth. However, at the turn of the year, Würth also announced the closure of the plant in Schopfheim.
In total, there were around 2,000 circuit board manufacturers in Europe in 1980. In 2000 there were only 630 and since then the number of factories has been falling continuously (Figure 3).
Europe’s market share in the global market is now 2.6% for 2023 (including Russia and Belarus, <2.4% without the two countries), while China has steadily worked its way up to 58.7% market share. If you add Taiwan with 10.9%, Korea with 10.0% and the rest of Southeast Asia with 4.8%, then 85% of the music plays in the Far East.
In total, as of January 1, 2025, there were still 190 circuit board manufacturers (less than 10% of 45 years ago) and the death continues continuously. At the beginning of this year, two companies were hit again and of the 23 European base material manufacturers that supply the base material for the circuit board, only two companies (Isola and Panasonic) remain, of which Panasonic has just announced the closure of the factory in Austria at the end of 2025.
The few remaining manufacturers are mostly active in small series and prototypes, where time pressure is important in addition to price pressure. Only 6 of the 190 manufacturers are still represented in Europe with a substantial sales volume.
In the monthly B2B statistics from Data4PCB you can see big differences. While the German speaking countries D-A-CH recorded minus 10.9% of sales in the reporting group in 2024, the UK recorded an increase of 8.2% and France and Italy a cumulative increase of 11.5%. This positive growth in both areas is primarily caused by growth in defense technology. Overall, Europe still fell by minus 4.4%, while initial projections for the global market for printed circuit boards expect a stable volume in line with the 2022 figures. This leaves Europe with a global market share of around 2% for 2024.
Just this week we were astonished to hear the current economics minister of Germany in a panel discussion to talk about the importance of the semiconductor industry in Europe. An interesting sign that the semiconductor industry lobbyists in Brussels have done their homework. However, it is bad for the Minister of Economic Affairs that he did not obtain comprehensive information. Firstly, semiconductors cannot be used without printed circuit boards and secondly, we now have a European share of the global semiconductor industry of 10% (which Brussels wants to increase to 20% through massive subsidies), i.e. five times more than with printed circuit boards. There are also initiatives in Brussels regarding printed circuit boards, but they would have to be much more massive to show the dangers of a total loss of the printed circuit board industry.
This is where the market segments in electronics come into play. If we look at market segments relevant to security, the first to be mentioned are defense technology, aerospace and then energy technology. The circuit board is still viewed as a commodity product that you only buy based on price. In contrast to most components that can be used for different electronic products, the circuit board cannot be used for other products. The circuits that have been defined on the circuit board and handed over to the manufacturer as Gerber data represent a precise description of the product. This can be compared to giving a city map to someone unfamiliar with the area. Anyone who has the Gerber data can see how the circuit will work through careful analysis.
Various analyses by various associations and market researchers have shown that today we only produce 60% of all printed circuit boards ourselves used for military products in Europe. This means that we send the Gerber data for some sensitive military electronics to China. It would be new for China to be an ally of Europe, especially since our current foreign minister ultimately described China as a dictatorship.
In discussions with the industry, we are now hearing that any change in the production of defense products requires requalification and, as an example, there are still many defense products that are soldered with tin/lead, even though the use of lead is normally prohibited. The industry quickly has a reason not to change anything, which means continuing to buy circuit boards for sensitive products in China.
If you have read the book “Blackout” by Marc Elsberg you know that anything is possible with targeted sabotage. While in the novel the terrorists exploit the possibility of manipulating software, it is also possible to use hardware. Last year, the Israeli secret service Mossat showed us how to do it. Pagers were deliberately manipulated in the hardware. Explosives were built into the circuit board and using a semiconductor with appropriate programming, by sending out a signal, all the pagers that had previously been sold to Hezbollah could be detonated at the same time, thereby killing 37 terrorists.
According to experts’ opinion, it is also easily possible to make appropriate modifications within a multi-layer circuit board between the power and ground layers, which cause a short circuit or an open circuit, when a specific signal is received and thus eliminates the functionality of the electronic assembly. Imagine if tanks, fighter jets, missiles or important communications systems could be disabled in this way. The defense of Europe could be eliminated very quickly. This cannot be solved by pointing out the problem and persuading. This requires a law at European level that, with immediate effect, allows the use of circuit boards for safety-relevant products exclusively from Europe and allied countries such as Switzerland, Norway and the UK. No transition periods until 2035 are acceptable; it is important to act quickly and convince politicians in Brussels that the problem of the printed circuit board should be solved first before billions of taxpayers’ money is pumped into the semiconductor industry, which only represents a secondary problem.
