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88 PCB007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2021 counting for about 70% of total market share in 2019. is gives them strong bargaining power in the industrial chain. PCB manufacturers are not overly sensitive to price, and customers generally pay more at- tention to product quality, technical content, and supply stability than pricing. As a result, the PCB customers are more stable in the eyes of the suppliers, owing to the constant strength of the leading companies. The price of raw materials remains firm; the Q3 profit margin of CCL manufacturers was under pressure last year. Since the second quarter of 2020, the price of raw materials has been increasing. For copper foil, the price of non-ferrous metals (one of the basic raw materials) be- gan to rise as companies recovered from the pandemic. In addition, the Chinese government began to in- crease its spending on infrastruc- ture, thus this "new urbanization" boosted the demand for industrial metals. e spot price of copper at the London Metal Exchange (LME) has increased from US $4,617/ton in March last year to US $7,100/ton. Based on the price at the beginning of the year, the cumulative increase rate is more than 55%. Looking at epoxy resin, aer two rounds of callback in 2020, the price returned to the level of 20,000 yuan/ton, and the short-term price is still rising steadily. According to recent data, the high price of raw materials (epoxy chloropropane and bisphe- nol A) is the reason for higher epoxy resin pric- es. On the other hand, since September 2020, the domestic demand and supply of epoxy res- in has been generally steady even with the in- creasing demand from PCB manufacturers. Epoxy resin production capacity is relatively limited, and the supply is somewhat tight. It is expected that product prices will remain firm. Glass fiber demand has been growing steadi- ly, especially as the economy recovered in the second half of 2020. However, supply has been limited since 2019, making for a tight supply- Figure 1: Market share of the main rigid copper clad laminate companies in 2019. (Source: Prismark, compiled by Zhongtai Securities Research Institute)