Distributor Anglia Components is warning of a huge surge in demand for multi-layer ceramic chip capacitors (MLCCs) driven by AI data centre build out demand. The company is advising customers that they need to get order coverage in place ASAP to prevent supply issues later in the year as the situation is expected to tighten severely.
Discloses Anglia’s CEO, Steve Rawlins: “We are now turning away demand from brokers, in order to conserve our inventories so that we can support our loyal customer base in the UK and Europe. We’ve been warning of shortages all year and now MLCCs have joined bellwether parts such as tantalum capacitors and small signal discretes on the shortages list.”
Although the data centre demand may seem counter intuitive, as they tend to use higher value MLCC products, the reality is that the production capacity for the more standard products that many customers do use is being shared with, or moved, to making the higher end products. Hence the constraint in capacity.
For context, one AI data centre rack can use upwards of 440K MLCCs to manage the huge power delivery requirements of the boards.
Anglia holds a strong profile of MLCCs from global suppliers including Murata, Samsung, AVX, and TDK. The company has innovative inventory management programmes to help users manage the inevitable shortages that will occur in the next few months, but urges customers to react quickly.
“Don’t make it easy for a broker to buy his next Lamborghini,” says Rawlins. “Schedule your orders with us now, and we’ll flex with you as your demand changes.”
