European Foundry Industry Sentiment

Feb­ru­ary 2022: Busi­ness sen­ti­ment in Feb­ru­ary without significance

The European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) increases by a solid 0.4 points in Feb­ru­ary and reaches a value of 109.8 points. This marks the highest value since pre pan­demic June 2019.

Con­sid­er­ing that the data were col­lec­ted before the Rus­sian inva­sion of Ukraine star­ted, it must be said that the FISI of Feb­ru­ary 2022 is los­ing its sig­ni­fic­ance and relevance.

Whether in raw mater­i­als, bind­ers, trans­port or energy, European foundries are con­fron­ted with immense cost explo­sions in almost all areas. There are also acute short­ages of input mater­i­als due to the dis­rup­tion of inter­na­tional sup­ply chains. At the same time, neg­at­ive reports from cus­tomer indus­tries bring fur­ther uncertainties.

It is not pos­sible at this point to make ser­i­ous state­ments about the effects of the war. The sanc­tions can be tightened at any time and lead to fur­ther spillover effects that influ­ence European foundries.

That the busi­ness cli­mate will suf­fer a con­sid­er­able shock in the com­ing month can be con­sidered as certain.

For the sake of com­plete­ness, take note that the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) remains on a high level in Feb­ru­ary. The minor decrease of 0.01 points brings the index to 1.79 points.

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