European Foundry Industry Sentiment

June 2021: Emer­ging from the crisis with a calm hand

In June the European Foundry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) con­tin­ues its recov­ery for the sev­enth con­sec­ut­ive month. The increase of 1.3 points brings the index to a value of 109.6. The driv­ing force behind this pos­it­ive devel­op­ment is the good assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation. Expect­a­tions for the com­ing six months, mean­while, did not increase sig­ni­fic­antly, but remain at a high level.

After the first half of the year, the most import­ant cus­tomer indus­tries of the European foundries show dif­fer­ent devel­op­ments, which will also affect the tend­ency for the rest of the year. While the auto­mot­ive industry con­tin­ues to face con­sid­er­able prob­lems in the pro­cure­ment of semi­con­duct­ors lead­ing to down­ward adjust­ments for the pro­duc­tion fore­cast of the industry, the recov­ery in mech­an­ical engin­eer­ing is more robust than assumed a few months ago. Flex­ib­il­ity and good cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tion regard­ing pro­duc­tion plan­ning are now being rewar­ded. Set­backs and euphoria alike must be met with a calm hand.

At the same time, the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) also con­tin­ues to improve for the 13^th con­sec­ut­ive month, reach­ing a new all-time high in June. The increase of 0.22 points raises the index to its record level of 1.71 points. The cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation is assessed as over­all pos­it­ive due to the excel­lent order situ­ation. There­fore, rising sales prices and high employ­ment are expec­ted for the com­ing months.

The FISI – European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator – is the earli­est avail­able com­pos­ite indic­ator provid­ing inform­a­tion on the European foundry industry per­form­ance. It is pub­lished by the European Foundry Asso­ci­ation (CAEF) every month and is based on sur­vey responses of the European foundry industry. The CAEF mem­bers are asked to give their assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation in the foundry sec­tor and their expect­a­tions for the next six months.

The BCI – Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator – is an indic­ator pub­lished by the European Com­mis­sion. The BCI eval­u­ates devel­op­ment con­di­tions of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor in the euro area every month and uses five bal­ances of opin­ion from industry sur­vey: pro­duc­tion trends, order books, export order books, stocks and pro­duc­tion expectations.

CAEF Con­tact:

Till­man van de Sand
Sec­ret­ary Com­mis­sion for Eco­nom­ics & Stat­ist­ics
phone: +49 211 68 71 — 301
mail: tillman.vandesand@caef.eu