Material Shortages Compound CNY Manufacturing Challenges

Chinese New Year celebrations take place a month after the ball drops in Times Square. And if you don’t plan beforehand with your Asian suppliers, your hangover might last until spring.

During the first few months of the year, China shuts down for 7 to 10 days for its Spring Festival. Also known as Chinese New Year (CNY), the holiday’s timing is determined by the traditional Chinese calendar, which tracks both the phases of the moon and the sun’s position.

For 2027, standard closures will run from Feb. 5 through Feb. 12. PCB buyers who fail to plan for it will find their production schedules disrupted.

Most buyers who work with Asian suppliers know about the annual holiday, yet many still view it as a simple weeklong break that is easy to plan around. Few printed circuit board buyers seem to realize that CNY actually stalls production and logistics for nearly a month. And in 2027, that disruption will be significantly worse.

Although the holiday is still about 90 days away, buyers must prepare now. Rising raw material prices and tightening supply are already extending lead times across the electronics supply chain, which will magnify the annual shutdown’s effects.

The biggest difference going into the 2027 holiday season is the volatility of the foundational materials required to build bare boards. Prices for copper foil, electronic-grade fiberglass yarn (E-glass), epoxy resins and precious metals used in surface finishes – such as gold for ENIG and silver for immersion silver – have been climbing steadily. At the same time, laminate manufacturers are shifting capacity to high-margin infrastructure projects, tightening supply of standard copper-clad laminates (CCL) and specialized high-speed materials.

Many high-demand laminates now carry delivery lead times of six to eight weeks just to reach the board house. Because we are already in the final quarter of the year, an eight-week material lead time leaves less than a month for board fabrication before factories begin powering down for the holidays. Unfortunately, material shortages will push many orders placed within the next several weeks directly into March 2027, requiring buyers to plan well beyond February.

This material crunch also creates an immediate commercial trap: quote expiration. When copper and laminate mills hike prices ahead of the holiday rush, PCB fabricators shorten quote validity windows, often to seven or 15 days. Buyers holding open quotes from two weeks ago may find those prices no longer valid when they try to release a purchase order for January shipment, or worse, that the quoted delivery date is no longer achievable because competitors have already claimed the raw stock.

To understand why a one-week holiday causes a month of delays, buyers have to look at the timeline on the factory floor. Manufacturing begins to slow one to two weeks before the official holiday, when an estimated 40% of the workforce starts traveling home to be with family. As line staffing drops, factories will not start complex jobs. They will focus entirely on finishing in-process boards, creating a hectic January push to ship products.

In the rush to get goods out the door, severe freight queues are common. Freight forwarders and customs brokers become overwhelmed as thousands of factories attempt to clear shipments simultaneously. A buyer may receive a valid tracking number in late January even though the package sits in a congested warehouse and does not move for days. If that shipment does not physically clear the port or airport before the festivities begin, the buyer must wait until shipping operations resume after the holiday.

Furthermore, orders received in the three to five days before the shutdown are unlikely to begin production until afterward. During the holiday week itself, factories, freight companies, customs offices, banks and domestic material sub-suppliers close completely. Buyers should not expect factory communications, engineering reviews or shipping updates. Meanwhile, new orders continue to arrive from Western buyers while the factories are dark, leaving sales and engineering teams with a massive administrative backlog. An order placed shortly before or during the holiday may not even be reviewed for several days after employees return.

When the holiday officially ends on Feb. 12, factories do not restart immediately or at the same pace. Full production rarely stabilizes until after the Lantern Festival on Feb. 20. Factories must wait for migrant workers to return from inland provinces, and many employees use the holiday break – after collecting their annual bonuses – to change jobs or remain in their hometowns. Double-digit workforce turnover is common across Asian manufacturing hubs in late February, causing acute labor shortages and sluggish production ramp-ups.

This post-holiday period introduces two major risks that buyers frequently overlook:

The expedite and scrap trap. Buyers who miss the December ordering window often pay steep expedite fees in January to force their boards onto a plane before CNY. However, if a complex multilayer board encounters a manufacturing defect during lamination, drilling or electrical testing in the final days before the shutdown, there is zero time for a remake. If a lot is scrapped on Jan. 28, that expedited shipment automatically slips into late February or March.

The March quality dip. High workforce turnover means factories spend late February and March training new line operators while simultaneously rushing to clear the post-holiday backlog. At the same time, wet-process chemical lines – including copper plating baths, etching lines and surface finish tanks – have been drained or powered down for two weeks and require careful titration and recalibration upon restart. The combination of green operators, freshly restarted chemical baths and schedule pressure creates a notorious spike in quality escapes. Buyers receiving boards from the first two weeks of post-CNY production should increase their incoming quality control (IQC) inspections accordingly.

Meanwhile, products that missed the pre-holiday shipping cutoff are rushed to freight forwarders who are already buried under similar demand, driving up air freight spot rates and causing shipping delays for several days after operations resume.

Buyers cannot simply sidestep CNY by shifting orders to neighboring Asian countries at the last minute. The effects extend well beyond mainland China. Taiwan observes the exact same holiday schedule, and Vietnam celebrates Tet on matching dates with similar workforce migrations.

While alternative manufacturing hubs like Malaysia and Thailand observe CNY for only a few days – meaning they do not experience factory closures or worker departures on the same scale – both countries remain heavily dependent on mainland China and Taiwan for raw laminates, copper foil, dry film and specialized chemistry. When Chinese material mills shut down and freight corridors freeze, Southeast Asian board shops face the exact same raw-material bottlenecks.

While CNY dates vary each year, buyers can find out the specifics months in advance. The holiday does not suddenly disrupt production. But it may expose how many buyers lack inventory.

To protect Q1 production lines, PCB buyers should immediately execute a four-part strategy:

Lock in orders and audit open quotes. Work with internal stakeholders, customers and management to review order histories and place purchase orders at least two months before the holiday. If you are holding open quotes from earlier in the quarter, verify with your supplier today that the pricing and material lead times still hold.

Use blanket orders to bypass inventory restrictions. Buyers who are restricted by just-in-time (JIT) mandates or cash-flow targets can use scheduled blanket purchase orders. Placing a six-month blanket PO now, with staggered monthly delivery releases through April, gives the fabricator the firm commitment needed to order and allocate scarce laminates today without forcing you to take delivery and pay for all the inventory in January.

Pre-approve alternate materials to prevent EQ holds. Prompt, clear communication between buyers and suppliers is critical when resolving engineering questions (EQs). If your fabrication drawing specifies a single-source laminate that currently has an eight-week lead time, your order will stall before it ever hits the shop floor. Work with your engineering team now to pre-approve functional equivalents (such as listing approved Shengyi, ITEQ, TUC or Ventec alternates alongside primary materials) directly on the fabrication notes so the factory can pull from available stock without pausing for an EQ review.

Build a post-holiday buffer. Do not just order enough inventory to survive the second week of February. Order enough stock to cover the holiday plus six to eight weeks afterward. This buffer is essential to sustain your assembly operations during the slow, backlog-heavy factory ramp-up into March.

February is the shortest month on the calendar, but without proper planning right now, it could easily feel like the longest.End of article content

Greg Papandrew has more than 25 years’ experience selling PCBs directly for various fabricators and as the founder of a leading distributor. He is cofounder of DirectPCB (directpcb.com); greg@directpcb.com.