In February 2021, the average price of international copper rose to US$8,440 per ton, demonstrating an upward trend for 10 consecutive months. In addition to the 66% rebound from troughs in April 2020, prices have exceeded highs for the past two years.

Impact analysis

The new U.S. administration has passed a multi-trillion-dollar stimulus economic relief plan, while China has successfully controlled the epidemic and helped boost economic recovery. Due to the sharp decline in supplies at the start of the epidemic, copper inventories worldwide are currently the lowest since 2011. With a weakened U.S. dollar and many overriding factors such as the successful rollout of vaccines and others, international copper prices are found to have revealed a rare, continuous, and swift rise. Although Taiwan's PCB industry has clearly benefited from the improvement of the economy since the fourth quarter of 2020, important upstream raw materials such as copper have also resulted in an imbalance in supply and demand concurrently, which has, in turn, affected the cost structure of downstream copper foil and copper foil substrates. For PCB manufacturers, financial indicators such as some inventory may not reflect such cost rises for now, but the continued increase in costs will definitely cut down on future gross profit margins.