The metal complex has repriced your shield

Every EMI shield in your BOM was costed against metal prices that no longer exist. The LME data is unambiguous:

Copper: $13,335/t — up approximately 49% versus April 2025 baselines; up 44% versus the ~$9,240/t that most 2025 BOM templates carried
Tin: $51,613/t — up approximately 58% versus prior baselines; Indonesia and Myanmar supply-chain constraints persist
Nickel: $18,985/t — elevated and stable, a key input for shield plating underlayers
Aluminum: $3,667/t — up 49% year-over-year, driven by smelter energy costs

A tin-plated copper-alloy shield stamped at 0.15 mm gauge, with a 5 µm tin finish on the working surfaces, carries embedded metal value that is 45–55% higher today than it was in the BOM it was priced against. Cold-rolled steel shields are less exposed to the copper and tin moves but face aluminum pressure through tooling and fixture costs. Any shield price established before Q1 2026 is stale, and the delta matters.

Where the cost lives in a shield design

Understanding which design parameters drive metal cost enables targeted recovery. The metal content in a typical board-level shield breaks down as:

Base material (stamped wall): the dominant cost element. A 0.15 mm nickel-silver can at 500 mg of finished weight embeds roughly 450 mg of base alloy. At current copper prices, each kilogram of Cu-Ni-Zn alloy feedstock is meaningful. Cold-rolled steel at comparable gauge contains far less copper but is still tin-plated on working surfaces.

Tin plating: at $51,613/t, every micrometer of tin on a plated surface costs real money at scale. A 10 µm tin finish on a 30 × 20 mm can adds roughly twice the plating cost of a 5 µm finish — and the performance difference is zero for solderability or SE purposes above 2 µm. Specifying 2–5 µm tin instead of 5–10 µm recovers plating cost without compromising any functional parameter.

Nickel underplate: nickel plating is a barrier layer between the base metal and the tin finish, preventing intermetallic migration. Specify 1–2 µm nickel — functionally adequate, and at $18,985/t it adds up. Some programs specify 5+ µm nickel for reasons that made sense at 2023 nickel prices; re-evaluate those specifications now.

Design parameters to adjust for cost recovery

Three levers, in decreasing order of impact:

1. Gauge reduction. The standard 0.20 mm gauge for board-level shields often carries safety factor from a time when material was cheap. Many applications perform identically at 0.15 mm — the SE physics are governed by the fence geometry, not the wall thickness (see Shield Report #001). A gauge reduction from 0.20 to 0.15 mm is a 25% reduction in base material content. Verify formability at the reduced gauge; POCONS engineering can assess this for your specific can geometry.

2. Material substitution: nickel-silver to tin-plated cold-rolled steel. Nickel-silver offers excellent corrosion resistance and formability; cold-rolled steel offers lower base-metal cost and a magnetic shielding benefit at low frequency. The SE above 100 MHz is equivalent for typical board-level shield applications — the skin depth in steel is shorter than copper, giving equivalent absorption in thinner material. The tradeoff is corrosion resistance in humid environments; if the assembly will be conformal-coated, cold-rolled steel is often the correct economic choice.

3. Tin plating reduction. As noted above — 2–5 µm is functionally identical to 5–10 µm for solderability and SE. The difference is tin cost, and at $51,613/t, trimming 3 µm of tin across a high-volume production run is a real number.

ℹ️The gauge-reduction verification test

A gauge reduction requires verification that the shield still meets its SE target. The test is not a full-wave simulation — it is a simple measurement: build three boards at the reduced gauge, run them on a network analyzer (shielded enclosure insertion-loss method) or in a small-area TEM cell. If the fence pitch and solder geometry are unchanged, the measured SE will be within 1–2 dB of the original. Do the measurement; do not assume.

The tariff overlay

Shield cost is not just metal and conversion — it is landed cost, including tariffs. The 25% US tariff on Korean electronics effective March 1, 2026 applies to parts engineered or finished in Korea. POCONS USA (San Diego) designs its shields with products manufactured in Korea (IATF 16949) and produced — stamped and plated — in Vietnam. Vietnam-origin production carries a different, lower tariff treatment than Korean-origin.

For a shield program that was previously costed on Korean-origin production, the tariff delta alone can exceed the metal cost delta: a 25% tariff on a $5 stamped part is $1.25 per unit; the metal cost increase on the same part might be $0.60–0.80. The tariff move is larger than the metal move. If your current shield is Korean-origin, re-quote Vietnam-origin. If you are a POCONS customer, you are already on the right production path.

Cost recovery framework

The right sequence for a shield cost recovery effort in the current environment:

Re-quote every shield at current metals — call it an emergency BOM refresh. Price letters from Q3 2025 are stale by 40–58% on metal content.
Audit the tin plating specification — any spec above 5 µm should justify itself or be revised down.
Evaluate gauge reduction with the network-analyzer verification test. Accept it if it passes; reject it if it doesn't.
Confirm country of origin and re-cost tariff exposure. If Korean-origin, compute the Vietnam-path delta; it frequently exceeds the metal-cost delta.
Lock quarterly pricing agreements on any shield with high metal-content sensitivity. The metals complex is not reverting to 2025 levels on a near-term timeline.

One thing

Your shield BOM has three exposed variables right now: base metal (+45–55%), tin plating (+58%), and origin tariff (+25% if Korean). Any one of them is material; all three together can double landed cost from a year-ago baseline. The re-cost exercise is not optional — it is the number your finance team does not know yet.