A familiar picture: Ibiden reigned (again) as the top PCB fabricator in 2006.

Ed: For discussion of the NTI 95 methodology, see the online version at pcdandm.com/cms/content/view/3730/95/

There may be a few fabricators missing from the list, but, to the best of this author's knowledge, this year's NTI study reveals 95 makers in 2006 had revenues of $100 million or greater. In 2005, there were 93.

Some fabricators from the 2005 list have "disappeared" because of mergers. A few disappeared because revenues dipped below $100 million, not necessarily in local currency but because of the exchange rate phenomenon. Exchange rates of major currencies are seen in TABLE 1.

Examples of mergers include Tyco's PCB Group, which was acquired by TTM Technologies. Yamanashi MEW merged with Panasonic Electronic Devices (PED) Photo-circuits had $160 million in revenues in 2005, but revenue dwindled to $76 million in 2006 and the company was shut down at the end of June. Hong Kong-based Redboard, with facilities in China, had less than $100 million revenue in 2006 due to various problems.

There are a few new entries in 2006. Gultech had good year thanks to its Wuxi plant performance, even after shutting its Singapore plants. It even turned a profit. Daisho-Microline came up quickly thanks to successful microvia board production, mainly for Nokia. (Although it bears the name Daisho, this Japanese maker's share is only about 15% and the company is actually Microline.) The author is not sure whether Hsing Kuo Industry had $100 million in revenue, but the company does have substantial plants in China.

The year-over-year growth of the top 95 fabricators was 16.2% (from $29.39 billion to $34.16 billion), topping the composite world growth of 13.1%. The "big get bigger" trend continues.

In 2006, of the approximate $47.5 billion worth of PCBs produced worldwide, Japanese fabricators accounted for $15.3 billion, Taiwanese fabricators about $11.7 billion and U.S. fabricators about $6.7 billion. The fabricators in these three countries were responsible for 71% of the world output (FIGURE 1). Of the 95 companies reported on, 69 (73%) of fabricators hail from these three countries. This is not a coincidence.

Bare vs. Assembled PWBs

Since many flex manufacturers are engaged in assembly operations and most rigid board fabricators are not, an apples-to-apples comparison is difficult to make because we are in many cases reporting the flex fabricators' combined output. Yes, some rigid board makers are also engaged in assembly through their parent organizations such as Multek (Flextronics), Sanmina-SCI (Sanmina-SCI)and Foxconn Advanced TechnologY (Foxconn or Hon Hai), but PCB output is treated separately from the parents' other sales, and the author was able to ascertain the PCB output thanks to the generosity of these fabricators.

There are 22 PCB makers engaged "primarily" in flex manufacturing. Some are also engaged in rigid board manufacture. Of the top 22 flex makers, 10 are Japanese (FIGURE 2). This is understandable, as about 40% of the total flex output is produced by Japanese manufacturers.

The total world flex output in 2006 is estimated at $7 billion. The flex output of the top 22 makers, after subtracting any rigid PCBs from their figures, is estimated to be about $5.6 billion, or 80% of the world output.

The PCB Fabricators

TABLE 2 lists the top 95 PCB fabricators worldwide. The following section reviews the top fabricators, covers critical information on the current situation and offers future expectations.

It is remarkable that Ibiden has held the top position for four consecutive years. With last year's investment of approximately $450 million for IC substrate production and the current investment of more than $250 million, it is likely that Ibiden will maintain the No. 1 position in the foreseeable future. Approximately 80% of its PCB revenue comes from IC package substrates. Its pretax profit on its PCB business was over 18%.

This year in April, there was a major management change within Ibiden. Yoshifumi Iwata, who drove the company to the top worldwide position, became chairman and Hiroki Takenaka took over the reigns of the company for the next growth period. It will be interesting to see how he steers Ibiden. As a start, the company hired 200 new college graduates in April. (Ibiden just upgraded its 2007 forecast, which targets $2 billion PCB revenue for fiscal 2007, the very first PCB maker to do so.)

Ibiden has other businesses besides PCBs. One of its fastest-growing businesses is ceramic filters that eliminate carbon particulates from auto and truck exhaust associated with diesel engines. Ibiden has plants to manufacture this filter in Japan, France and Hungary. Its PCB plants are in Japan, the U.S. (Elgin, IL), Beijing and the Philippines with final inspection stations in Shanghai and a few other places in Asia.

Unimicron has grown leaps and bounds by a series of acquisition as well as organic expansion. It has several manufacturing locations in Taiwan and China. Unimicron was second in cell-phone board output in 2006 (180 million pieces) after Compeq, which produced about 190 million pieces. Cellphone boards are produced at the Shan Ying and Lu Chu plants in Taiwan and the Shenzhen and Kunshan plants in China. Uniflex (Kunshan) is a joint venture between Unimicron (51%) and Uniflex of Taiwan (49%). Unimicron manufactures all sorts of PCBs. The recent emphasis is on IC substrates and high layer count multilayer PCBs. Moreover, the firm is investing $500 million in the Suzhou area, where it will build various types of PCBs including IC substrates.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics (SEMCO) has been concentrating in two areas: IC substrates and microvia boards for cellphones including flex-rigid boards. Approximately 60% of its revenue was derived from IC substrates and 40% from microvia boards. It also invested $400 million in the southern part of Korea (Ilsan) for flip-chip package substrates.

Nippon Mektron is the largest flex maker in the world with plants in Japan, Taiwan, China, Thailand, Germany and the Czech Republic. Its growth was slow last year due to price erosion of flex products caused by severe competition that resulted from global overcapacity. Sixty% of its revenue comes from overseas operations. The flex assembly business is growing rapidly with the completion of a plant in Suzhou. Nippon Mektron is building two plants in China, one next to the existing plant in Zhuhai and one in Amoi. The latter is designated as a "finishing" plant for the Taiwan plants.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

The company's origin is from a technical transfer from Mektron (Rogers) and it was allowed to use "Mektron" with a "Japan" prefix, but only in Japan. All its overseas subsidiaries are called Mektec.

CMK was known to be the largest maker of single-sided boards (SSB) in the world. Today, however, it has changed its course completely, building mainly multilayer boards. It is still engaged in SSB production in China, Malaysia and Indonesia. However, more than half of its revenue is derived from MLBs. Besides several plants in Japan, it operates at three sites in China; two in Dongguang (single, double-sided and multilayer) and one in Wuxi (microvia), plus a JV in Dongguan with GBM of Taiwan (CMK is a minority owner with 49% of share).

CMK's Singapore single-sided plant was shut down several years ago. Its newest plant is in Thailand, recently inaugurated. Its $100 million investment is the first stage and CMK has decided to expand this Thai plant into the second phase. About 35% of the PCBs CMK makes are for the automotive industry. CMK is probably the largest fabricator of automotive PCBs in the world, at $350 million. The second largest automotive PCB maker is Viasystems Group.

Nanya PCB is concentrating on IC substrates and highend MLB in Taiwan and all other products are pushed to its China subsidiary in Kusnhan. Today, Nanya PCB derives 70% of its revenue from IC substrates. Half of this comes from flip-chip substrates. Nanya PCB obtained its original flip-chip manufacturing technology from Japan's NTK.

Nanya PCB is a part of Nanya PCB World. Its parent, Nanya Plastic, from which Nanya PCB became independent and has its own stock listed, makes glass yarn, glass cloth, copper foil, laminates, dry film and solder resist among other things. Its model is total integration. Its investment tactics are on at once flamboyant yet cautious, which is obvious from the expansion plan both in Taiwan and China. Its expansion plan does not sacrifice profits. In this author's eyes, Nanya PCB continues to push the football one yard at a time rather than going for the long pass. Its China plant has been strong for Delphi and Sony, but the second plant is now pushing BGA/CSP and higher layercount MLB with the introduction of pin lamination. When plant 8 is completed, Nanya PCB will supposedly have a monthly flipchip production capacity of 45 million pieces.

Shinko Electric Industry is strongly affiliated with Fujitsu Ltd., which owns more than 50% of Shinko's share. As its lead frame business continues to decline, its flip-chip and other IC substrate business continues to grow. It is also heavily engaged in assembly of IC substrates and camera modules. It is one of four flip-chip package substrate suppliers to Intel; Ibiden, Shinko, Samsung and Nanya PCB (with NTK). Last year, it expanded its main flip-chip manufacturing plant in Nagano, Japan. FIGURE 3 shows Shinko's main flip-chip plant at Wakaho, Nagano.