When the price of a PCB rises, attention often turns to copper first. The raw material is visible and its price development is regularly discussed. The price of the finished PCB, however, results from a considerably more extensive combination of materials, production steps and requirements. Anyone who wants to understand price changes or assess savings should therefore consider the entire manufacture of the specific construction.
The base material consists of several cost components
In glass-fabric-reinforced PCBs, glass fabric, resin system and copper foil work together. Glass fabric and resin are used to make prepregs. Pressing with copper foil and curing produces copper-clad laminates, often called CCL. Price changes can therefore begin at various points. A tight fabric supply can make the base material more expensive even if the pure copper price moves only slightly.
In addition, copper foil suitable for industrial processing differs from the exchange-traded metal. Its costs also depend on foil type, thickness, surface treatment and manufacturing effort. Speciality foils for demanding signal transmission have to achieve defined properties. A general commodity index can therefore provide orientation, but it does not fully reflect the procurement price of a particular copper foil.
The construction determines material consumption and effort
Two PCBs with the same outer dimensions can give rise to different costs. The number of layers, copper thicknesses, drilled holes and required lamination cycles influences the production effort. Added to this are requirements for conductor tracks, spacings, surface finishes and electrical tests. A price comparison is only meaningful if the underlying specifications correspond sufficiently.
The utilisation of the production format also plays a part. Depending on how individual PCBs can be arranged on a production panel, different material losses arise. A small change in dimensions can therefore be economically relevant in individual cases. Whether it makes sense, however, has to be weighed against mechanical interfaces, assembly requirements and the effort of a design change.
Yield and capacity influence the unit price
What counts for the manufacturer is how many defect-free PCBs result from a production run. More demanding structures or additional process steps can increase the effort and influence the economic yield. A technically possible design is therefore not automatically the most cost-effective design for stable series production. Design for manufacturability should be part of the coordination at an early stage.
The availability of the required capacity is a further factor. Short-notice prioritisation, additional logistics or small special lots can give rise to different costs from a plannable series requirement. This does not mean that every higher price is explained by a general shortage report. A comprehensible discussion of the costing should state which cost component has changed and to which period the change relates.
Percentages need a basis for comparison
The Lexington market briefing of August 2026 describes rising laminate prices and the resulting pressure on PCB costs. Such figures are only meaningful together with their reference point: is it a month-on-month comparison, a cumulative development or a particular PCB construction? Without this context, identical percentages can express quite different circumstances.
A worked example illustrates the cumulative increase: if a laminate becomes more expensive twice in succession, by 15 per cent each time compared with the previous price, its price index rises from 100 to 115 and then to 132.25. This corresponds to 32.25 per cent in total. After a third increase of 15 per cent, the cumulative increase amounts to around 52.09 per cent.
How strongly a material price increase affects the costs of a PCB also depends on the stackup. In a two-layer PCB, the higher price of the copper-clad laminate used can weigh more heavily than in a 14-layer construction in which the same affected material accounts for only part of the total material and production costs. This presupposes that the other materials do not become more expensive to the same extent. The decisive factors are therefore the specific construction and the cost share of the materials affected in each case.
Savings should fit the project
A sensible approach begins with the actual requirements. Are all material properties functionally necessary? Can order quantities be bundled better or call-offs planned more reliably? Is there a construction that is more favourable to manufacture while providing the same function? Such questions can lead to improvements without reducing technical suitability to a pure unit price comparison.
For every alternative, follow-on costs also belong in the assessment. Additional samples, tests, approvals or changes to adjacent assemblies can put an initially attractive saving into perspective. Conversely, a simplification agreed at an early stage can be economical over the entire service life. The decisive point is to set one-off changeover costs and recurring unit costs against each other transparently and to estimate the expected quantities realistically.
For a well-founded cost discussion with Lexington®, the current specification, the quantity profile and a clear description of possible scope for change are therefore helpful. In this way the discussion can concentrate on the cost drivers that can be influenced for your product. This creates a better basis for decisions than the isolated question of the copper price.