“how many PCB material companies have left Europe between 2015 and 2025, to which country did they leave or did they just shut down?”
Best-evidence web review across 7 checked source pages and a 6-row candidate shortlist (Panasonic corroborated four times), spanning 7 independent hosts. On a strict company-level definition, 1 confirmed full exit; counting partial closures and divestments, 3 company-level activity changes. It is not a statutory registry census.
Sources name the three destination countries together; they do not say which products go where. No specific allocation is implied.
Isola’s European glass-cloth production ends after the fabrics sale; Isola stays a European laminate maker. Holders Technology closes Opteon Germany but keeps PCB divisions in the UK and Germany.
Holders Technology sells its Kirchheimbolanden, Germany PCB-material site to Ventec; manufacturing continues at the same site under Ventec from 1 October 2021.
Panasonic Industry closes its last European PCB base-material plant at Enns, Austria, by end of December 2025 — about 140 employees affected — moving production to sites in China, Japan or Taiwan.
| Company | Event date | Site | Material | Manufacturing result | Buyer / destination | Left Europe? | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Holders Technology plc | 2016-12-31 | Germany | specialty laminates and materials for printed circuit board manufacture | stopped | — | no | share-talk.com |
| Holders Group | — | — | company history page (context) | context only | — | — | holderstechnology.com |
| Holders Technology | 2021-10-01 | Kirchheimbolanden, Germany | back-up and entry material | sold and continued at the same site | Ventec International Group | unclear | evertiq.com |
| Holders Technology | 2021-10-21 | Kirchheimbolanden, Germany | back-up and entry material for drilling and routing applications | sold and continued at the same site | Ventec | unclear | ventec-group.com |
| Circuit Foil | — | — | copper foil | was sold and continued at the same site | Doosan | no | iconnect007.com |
| Panasonic Industry | 2025-12-31 | Enns (Upper Austria), Austria | base materials for printed circuit boards | manufacturing stopped and production moved abroad | China, Japan or Taiwan | yes | leuze-verlag.de |
| Panasonic | 2025-12 | Enns, Austria | PCB materials | moved | Asia | yes | evertiq.com |
Four rows corroborate the same Panasonic event; it is counted once above.
Method: best-evidence web review of European PCB base-material manufacturing exits, 2015–2025. 7 checked source rows (dispositions with quoted evidence) plus a 6-row candidate shortlist; sources span 7 independent hosts and no single URL backs more than half the rows. “Full exit” means ending all relevant PCB-material manufacturing in Europe; pure ownership changes and finished-PCB plant closures are excluded. Gould is outside the window (production ceased end-2014). No authoritative complete registry of European PCB-material firms per year exists; counts reflect found evidence. Long evidence quotes were cut for space.