EMS Directory now has a dedicated category for UK PCB fabrication: companies that manufacture the bare board itself, rather than assembling components onto one. It's a genuine gap we've closed, not a cosmetic addition, so here's what changed and why it matters if you're sourcing.
Why fabrication needed its own home
PCB fabrication and PCB assembly are different businesses. Fabrication is manufacturing the bare board: the substrate, copper traces and plated holes, built up from raw laminate and copper foil. Assembly is populating that finished board with components. Most companies on this directory offer assembly; a smaller, distinct group specialises in fabrication instead, some alongside assembly, some as dedicated bare-board specialists with no assembly capability at all.
Until now, that distinction had no clean home on the directory. A pure fabricator doesn't belong under PCB Assembly, and force-mapping a company into a category it doesn't actually operate in helps no one searching this site for the right supplier. PCB Fabrication is a category built specifically so bare-board manufacturers show up correctly, filterable on their own terms rather than folded into a category built around a different kind of business.
What's new
36 UK PCB fabrication companies are live in the new category: 10 newly added, researched and verified the same way every listing on this directory is, real company sites, Companies House, no invented capability, and 26 existing listings reviewed individually and tagged in where the evidence actually supports it. Not every listing that mentioned "fabrication" in passing qualified. Only companies with real, confirmed bare-board manufacturing capability, dedicated fabrication pages, named equipment, process detail, went in.
What this means if you're sourcing bare boards
If your project needs board fabrication specifically, whether that's a one-off prototype run or an ongoing production relationship, you can now filter for it directly rather than searching through assembly-focused listings hoping to spot a fabricator among them. Layer count, board material and surface finish are the details that actually separate one fabricator from another, and every listing in the new category captures them the same structured way the rest of the directory does.
How EMS Directory helps
Whether you need fabrication alone, assembly alone, or both from one supplier, EMS Directory's filters let you narrow to exactly the combination your project needs. Shortlist the UK companies that genuinely fit, compare them side by side, and send one enquiry to your whole shortlist at once.
Note for publishers and journalists
Figures and data in this article are drawn from EMS Directory's own dataset of UK electronics manufacturing listings, and may be cited with attribution to EMS Directory and a link to this article. For press enquiries or a custom data cut, contact ems@emsdirectory.co.uk.
