EIPC Issues Letter of Urgency

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Alun Morgan, president of EIPC, issued a letter last week in an effort to raise awareness of the state of PCB manufacturing in Europe. He writes, 

"The European PCB manufacturing industry and its supply base has been steadily shrinking since the dot com crash at the start of the millennium. European demand for PCBs and assemblies has, however, continued to grow, thus creating an ever widening gap between European domestic capacity and consumption. The risks posed by this imbalanced supply and demand pattern came into sharp focus during the Covid-19 pandemic which caused chaos in extended supply chains across the world and resulted in widespread shortages.

"More recently geopolitical forces, not least of which being the war in Ukraine, have brought defence and security to the fore, and it is increasingly apparent that the geographical region of Europe is barely able to supply its critical PCB defence needs.

"The EIPC is calling on all European governments to recognize the existential threat to European PCB producers and to take urgent action to provide explicit assistance to reverse the trend and to kickstart renewed investment in both technology and capacity to meet current and future needs. 

"Please support our Letter of Urgency on behalf of your organisation/company by confirming this to eipc@eipc.org. In doing so, the name of your organisation will be added to the published support list."