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22 The PCB Magazine • December 2014 What is certain is that board production will continue to grow in China but the boom factor is absent unless their export markets pick up. Taiwanese fabricator revenues (which in- clude those from production facilities in China) for the first three quarters of 2014 suggest rigid board production value growth of 5% compared with 2013, while FPC has experienced a fairly astonishing 15% growth. Nevertheless, there has been some slowing of the FPC market which registered nearly 18% year on year for the first six months of 2014. Based on this data, the projected 12/12 growth curve in Figure 15 sug - gest that 2014 will end with annual growth in low single digits (5% maximum) while the start of a rebound in 2015 could take that year-end growth up to more than 10% and possibly 15%. Using the derived annual growth rates, the regional forecast values for electronics produc- tion and PCB production are summarised in Tables 1 and 2. China growth rates are not re- ported separately here and the numbers for Asia Figure 14: electronics production in china, 6/12 growth. (Source: nbSc) Figure 15: electronics production in china, 12/12 growth, historic and forecast 2014–2017. 2015 OUTLOOk FOR THE PCB INDUSTRy: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIvE continues