FRANKFURT – Printed circuit board manufacturers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland reported total third quarter sales up 1.9% year-over-year and 0.5% sequentially, according to ZVEI.

Supply bottlenecks in Asia resulted in a rise in sales in the past year, says the firm.

Third quarter orders were down 16% year-over-year and 12% sequentially, a lower value than the previous 14 quarters.

The book-to-bill ratio was 0.85.

New applications such as Industry 4.0 have increased demand. However, supply bottlenecks are currently curbing deliveries of key components, especially multilayer ceramic capacitors.

With new device generations, the demand for individual components per device has increased tenfold. In addition, the expansion of capacity for the required components has been slow and may have a significant impact after one to two years, says ZVEI, and the automotive sector is experiencing slowing demand for PCBs.

The number of employees increased 1.1% compared to the third quarter of 2017 and was up 0.6% sequentially.