European Foundry Industry Sentiment

Octo­ber 2021: Threat of Setback

In Octo­ber, the European Foundry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) dropped sig­ni­fic­antly. The decrease of 1.0 index points was the largest month-on-month drop since April 2020 when the first wave of Covid-19 infec­tions hit Europe. The index value decreases to 106.6 points in October.

In the assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation, the more pos­it­ive assess­ments among iron casters com­pared to the pre­vi­ous month still out­weigh the already notice­able down­turn among non-iron casters. With regard to the expect­a­tions for the next six months, how­ever, the pic­ture in the entire industry is notice­ably clouded.

Con­tinu­ing prob­lems in the global sup­ply chains and the related prob­lems in the auto­mot­ive industry in par­tic­u­lar threaten to limit the recov­ery of the foundry industry and do not bode well for the first quarter of 2022. Mean­while, the hor­rendous costs for raw mater­i­als and energy are caus­ing tre­mend­ous dif­fi­culties in eco­nomic pro­duc­tion for the energy-intens­ive foundry industry at the begin­ning of winter.

While the het­ero­gen­eity of the cus­tomer sec­tor does not allow a uni­form pic­ture of the demand side, on the sup­ply side the entire foundry industry is facing con­sid­er­able threats. The trends all over Europe are point­ing in the same direction.

At the same time, the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) remains on a high level in Octo­ber. The slight increase of 0.05 points brings the index to its to 1.76 points. The pro­duc­tion trend of the past months as well as the sales price expect­a­tions for the com­ing months are slightly increas­ing thus back­ing the BCI.

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