Market news |
By Nick Flaherty
Cables of all kinds are seeing significant growth for a number of key reasons. From the expansion of AI datacentres requiring high-performance copper and optical cables to renewable energy and the rollout of fast chargers for EVs requiring cooled copper cables, the demand for power and data is driving the need for cable systems.
According to Mordor Intelligence, the wire and cable market reached US$245.44 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach $315.78 billion by 2031, growing at 5.17% a year. Sustained capital spending on offshore wind export links in the North Sea and East Asia, accelerated fibre-to-the-home builds across India and Southeast Asia, and the shift toward battery-electric vehicle harnesses are broadening the revenue base of the wire and cable market.
Power grid operators are front-loading orders for 320kV and 525kV subsea corridors to de-risk project timelines, while hyperscale data-centre builders are locking in long-haul fibre capacity to support 400 gigabit and 800 gigabit optics.
The global cable market. Source: Mordor Intelligence
Localized high-voltage cable manufacturing in the United States and Europe is reshaping global supply chains, reducing logistics costs and mitigating foreign exchange exposure for projects tied to domestic content incentives.
By voltage, low-voltage cables led with 46.12% revenue share in 2025, while extra- and high-voltage segments are forecast to expand at a 7.91% CAGR through 2031.
Power cables accounted for 38.27% of 2025 revenue, whereas fibre-optic lines are poised to grow at an 8.62% CAGR to 2031. Copper captured 58.48% volume in 2025, and aluminium is projected to rise at a 6.84% CAGR through 2031.
Underground deployments held 43.91% of 2025 projects, with submarine layouts advancing at an 8.43% CAGR during the forecast window. Power infrastructure accounted for 29.56% of demand in 2025, and telecom and data centres are expected to grow at an 8.12% CAGR.
Ethernet is the key technology for low-voltage cables, and the market is experiencing strong growth, projected to reach over $20 to $29 billion by 2030–2034, driven by increasing demand for high-speed data transmission, data centre expansion, and industrial automation. The market, encompassing Cat5e, Cat6, and Cat7/8 cables, is expanding at a CAGR between 4 and 16% as a result of rising IoT adoption and infrastructure development.
As part of this growth, French cable giant Nexans is to buy Ohio-based cable maker Republic Wire in a deal worth €680 million. This will be a strategic platform in the US, which is one of the world’s largest markets and among the fastest-growing for low- and medium-voltage cables. The US low-voltage segment is estimated at €12 billion by analyst Roland Berger, mainly driven by sustained demand across residential, commercial, and data centre expansion.
Republic Wire makes copper and aluminium wire products at its 32.5k square meters manufacturing facility, equipped with significant automation and a newly completed 30k square meters warehouse and distribution centre. A significant expansion program that will be fully online by the end of 2026, increasing its production capacity by approximately 30%.
The deal complements the recent acquisition of Electro Cables in Canada and creates a platform for future organic growth and acquisitions across the US.
Most regions have yet to move to digital power cabling, says Roland Berger.
Ethernet is also moving to simpler cabling. Existing Industrial Ethernet solutions based on 100BASE-TX/10BASE-T provide high data bandwidth up to 100 Mbit/s and power over a Cat-5 or Cat-6e cable with PoE but are limited to 100 m distance and don’t support hazardous area use cases as they are high-power solutions.
New single pair Ethernet (SPE) physical layer standards, such as 10BASE-T1L (IEEE 802.3cg-2019), support sensors on cables as long as 1700m in hazardous environments without the need for complex, power-hungry gateways, and enable a converged Ethernet network across the information technology (IT) and operating technology (OT) networks.
Italian cable maker Prysmian has set a world first by creating the first-ever cable with a negative-carbon footprint, a significant breakthrough to reduce carbon emissions. This assessment uses a cradle-to-gate approach, meaning the cable’s sourcing and manufacturing processes remove more carbon emissions than they release.
Prysmian is now starting the industrialization process of the patent-pending technology using its manufacturing footprint across the world for power grid customers.
The new cables will be able to integrate into existing grid designs and maintain electrical and mechanical performance while a combination of bio-polymers, low-carbon, and recycled materials significantly lowers and ultimately achieve product negative-carbon-footprint.
“We all know that reducing carbon emissions in industrial processes is necessary, but the only way to do this effectively is through innovation. We’ve done just that, offering our customers something no other cable company has ever done: a cable that can go beyond carbon neutrality, and make a positive effect on climate,” said Cinzia Farisé, Executive Vice President – Power Grid & Electrification Business
The new cable will reach a negative carbon balance of up to 1 ton of C02 absorbed per km of cable, and Prysmian plans to roll it out in the second half of 2026.
The High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) cable market is estimated at US$11.70 billion in 2026, and is expected to reach $17.27 billion by 2031, at a CAGR growth of 8.10%.
This is driven by rising offshore wind farms in Europe and Asia-Pacific, national super-grid programs in China, India, and the Gulf, and the need to carry power over long distances.
Utilities are shifting specifications toward aluminium-core conductors to hedge copper price volatility, while cable makers deepen backward integration into XLPE resin production to secure supply.
Fibre-optic cables are projected to rise at an 8.62% CAGR, the strongest growth within the wire and cable market, driven by 5G backhaul, cloud interconnects, and fibre-to-the-home mandates. Power cables held 38.27% of 2025 revenue but face mature trajectories in North America and Western Europe. Signal and control variants are being driven by Industry 4.0 upgrades, while coaxial demand tapers as video migrates to over-the-top streaming.
The wire and cable market size for fibre optics is expanding further as demand for 400-gigabit coherent optics requires ultra-low-loss glass. Corning’s bend-insensitive single-mode fibre reduces duct congestion by allowing more strands to be squeezed into existing conduits. Power cables are integrating fibre sensors for real-time condition monitoring, blending data and electricity in one sheath.
The latest optical cable from Prysmian contains 288 fibres within a compact 6.1 mm diameter, achieving a density of 9.9 fibres per mm² and allowing installation into standard 8 mm ducts.
This is the first time that a microduct cable can feature 160µm optical fibre. Microducts are small, flexible tubes that are inside the cable and are used for clean and continuous paths for fibre connections.
The Sirocco Ultra family uses Prysmian’s 160µm single‑mode fibre that is insensitive to bends for next‑generation networks while maintaining full compatibility with existing infrastructures.
The cable reduces its size by up to 35% compared to conventional microduct cables, enabling installers to put new cables into already crowded ducts and use smaller ducts in new buildings or infrastructure, cutting installation costs and reducing the use of raw materials. This can be used for applications such as data centres, fibre-to-the-curb, and 5G use cases that need high-density data transfer.
“We set a new standard of fibre miniaturization, and now we can unlock unpredicted cable density,” said Ian Griffiths, Vice President of R&D for the Digital Solutions segment at Prysmian. “This means not only more efficient connections in high-density application such as data centres, FTTx and 5G, but also, we can significantly reduce deployment costs for our customers and make the roll-out of this essential digital infrastructure much faster thanks to its compact design. We have also done this in a sustainable way, by reducing the use of materials.”
Cables are used all across the AI datacentre. Short, high-speed active cables can connect servers, while optical cables connect racks. Medium voltage cables provide power to the racks, while high voltage cables supply much-needed power to the facility.
The active copper cable market was US$13.12 billion in 2025 and is estimated to grow from $13.81 billion in 2026 to reach $17.85 billion by 2031, at a CAGR of 5.27%. This is driven by hyperscale data-centre expansion, AI-optimized server architecture, and the sector’s cost-per-port advantage in short-reach links underpin this steady rise.
The active cable market. Source: Mordor Intelligence
Copper continues to win inside the rack where its low latency offsets optical reach benefits, while new PCIe 5.0/6.0 and CXL use-cases extend demand beyond traditional networking. 100 Gbit/s connections dominate, with a 54.40% share of the active copper cable market size in 2025, while 800 Gbit/s links record the fastest growth at 5.82% CAGR to 2031, while 28 AWG gauge copper wire dominated with 59.25% market share in 2025; 32 AWG and finer grades are set to advance at a 6.94% CAGR.
North America is the strongest market, with 37.55% of the active copper cable market in 2025, whereas Asia-Pacific posts the highest 6.32% CAGR through 2031.
The move to software-defined vehicles is increasing the need for more cables and increasing the weight of the harness in a vehicle, driving designers to look at ways to reduce this.
At the same time, the adoption of Society of Automotive Engineers J3400 connector standards across Ford, General Motors, and Rivian has harmonized high-voltage vehicle cable specifications, making it easier for tier-one suppliers to scale global production. Molex’s 1,000-volt, 500-amp connectors enable 350-kilowatt fast charging, which restores 80% of battery capacity within 15 minutes, pressuring harness designers to manage thermal loads. Transitioning from 400-volt to 800-volt vehicle architectures reduces cable gauge and weight and can trim the bill of materials by up to 20%, appealing to original equipment manufacturers seeking cost parity with internal-combustion models.
Automation investments by Leoni and TE Connectivity, including ultrasonic welding and laser stripping, enhance throughput and consistency at a time when global electric-vehicle output is on a trajectory toward 30 million units by 2030. High-speed data buses share wiring pathways with traction cabling, pushing demand for shielded, electromagnetically compatible products that withstand aggressive under-hood temperature cycles.
Analog Devices has developed a second generation of its A2B audio technology that reduces the number of cables needed to simplify the automotive harness. The move to carrier-based coding from line coding means that the cables can support 11 nodes with a cable length of up to 80m and a determinism of 50µs per node, as well as improved electromagnetic compatibility, especially in the FM and DAB radio bands.
A2B 2.0 supports 11 audio nodes on a single cable up to 80m long. Source: Analog Devices
“Ten years ago the first A2B was mostly analogue with lots of cables with separate cables for audio, power and control that did not support new applications with advanced voice and noise cancellation,” said Andrew Lanfear, managing director of the automotive group at ADI.
“A2B 2.0 provides control and up 50W of power over the same line with determinism and low latency without additional cabling. It also quadruples the bandwidth [to 98.3Mbit/s] to support 119 channels up and 119 channels down, 16bit and 48kHz and many OEMs are looking at high definition audio and higher sampling rates.”
The EV charging cables market is experiencing substantial growth as the global automotive industry accelerates toward electric mobility. Rising adoption of electric vehicles across passenger and commercial transportation segments is significantly increasing the demand for advanced charging systems.
Overall, the global EV charging cables market was US$448.8 million in 2020 and reached $1,797.5 million in 2026, with projections to expand to $5,879.1 million by 2033, representing a CAGR of 18.4% between 2026 and 2033. This is driven by increasing electric vehicle production, rapid deployment of charging stations, and technological advancements in high-speed charging systems. AC charging cables continue to maintain strong demand due to their widespread use in residential and workplace charging stations. Asia Pacific remains the leading regional market owing to strong electric vehicle manufacturing capabilities, government incentives, and the rapid expansion of EV charging infrastructure in major economies.
According to MarketsandMarkets, the liquid-cooled EV charging cable market is projected to grow from $510 million in 2025 and is set to reach $1.28 billion by 2032, a growth of 14.0%.
The ultrafast charging segment is expected to dominate the liquid-cooled EV charging cable market in 2025, particularly in the 500 to 900 kW segment. While Asia Pacific is set to be the largest and fastest-growing region in the global liquid-cooled EV charging cable market, the market is dominated by European companies, particularly Phoenix Contact and LEONI in Germany and HUBER+SUHNER and BRUGG eConnect in Switzerland, as well as Sinbon Electronics in Taiwan.
The liquid-cooled EV charging cable market is progressing as vehicle manufacturers increasingly adopt 800 V electrical architectures. These high-voltage systems are supporting faster charging while placing greater demands on current handling and thermal control within cable assemblies. Charging infrastructure operators are therefore favouring cable solutions that can support repeated high-power charging cycles without affecting safety or ease of use. Liquid cooling enables smaller and more manageable cable designs while maintaining thermal stability at higher electrical loads.
At the same time, growing standardization across charging platforms is easing regional deployment, while enhanced flexibility and ergonomics are encouraging wider use across public and commercial charging sites.
As a result, the 500 to 900 kW segment is projected to be the largest segment during the forecast period, as these cables align closely with current ultrafast charging deployment needs while remaining technically and economically practical for most charging operators. These cables are widely used in 350 kW and above DC fast chargers, where thermal loads exceed the limits of air-cooled systems.
Operators are prioritizing charging sessions below 20 minutes without compromising cable handling and safety, and this is increasing the current density requirements, pushing cable manufacturers and charger OEMs toward liquid-cooled designs.
By cable diameter, the 30–50 mm segment is the largest share, balancing power-handling capability, thermal performance, flexibility, and installation practicality for ultrafast and megawatt-class DC charging systems. This diameter range supports high current transmission required for chargers with a power capacity of 350 kW and above, while maintaining manageable cable weight and bend radius.
Standardization efforts by charger OEMs and connector system providers are converging on this diameter range to ensure compatibility with the CCS connector standard and the emerging megawatt charging architectures.
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