Want to hear some interesting facts about our industry? IPC recently issued its annual PCB Production Report for the Year 2010and I have to say it was full of interesting stuff. Some of the information in the report was nothing less than mind-boggling.

For example, did you know that:

·          Asia now builds over 87% of all PCBs in the world?

·          Asia Asia uses 90% of all of the world's laminate?

·          China's uses 55 times more liquid photo-imageable solder resist than North America? That's 55 times more!

·          Rigid-flex business in Asia doubled in 2010?

·          Rigid-flex business worldwide grew by 87% over 2009, making it the industry's fastest growing technology?

·          The second-fastest growing technology segment was the metal core market, which grew by 69%? The rigid market only grew by 6% and the regular flex market grew 8%.

·          Metal prices went up 41% in 2010?

Fascinating isn't it?

Here are a few facts that all of us should know--write these down:

·          The overall PCB production for 2010 was $54.7 billion.

·          There are 2,600 PCB fabrication facilities worldwide.

·          The PCB market worldwide grew by almost 20% last year.

Worldwide PCB production by region breaks down like this:

·          Asia - 87% ($47.5 billion)

·          North America - 6.7% ($3.7 billion)

·          Europe - 5.2% ($2.7 billion)

·          Mideast/Africa - 0.4% ($220 million)

·          South America -  0.2% ($110 million)

China has either 1,100 or 1,500 circuit board facilities depending on who is doing the reporting, Europe has less than 300 board fabricators, which is down from a high of 1,500, and North America has 314 fabricators, which is down from approximately 1,800.

In North America, we produced $3.7 billion worth of PCBs in 2010, which was up 7% from 2009.

U.S. companies produced a total of $6.7 billion circuit boards--a figure that includes $3 billion that were built in Asia by American-owned companies.

The number of people employed by the PCB industry in the year 2000 was 95,000, a number that is now down to 22,000 as of 2010.

Here are a couple of very interesting facts:

·          A full two-thirds of all PCBs fabricated in China are built by non- Chinese owned companies.

·          Taiwanese companies now produce more PCBs in China than they do in Taiwan.