European Foundry Industry Sentiment

March 2022: War in Ukraine raises sub­stan­tial eco­nomic uncertainties

The European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) decreases by 1.6 points in March and reaches a value of 108.2 points. Eco­nomic dis­rup­tions fol­low­ing the war in Ukraine thus have a clear impact on the European foundry industry.

The asso­ci­ated uncer­tain­ties play a great role when it comes to expect­a­tions for the upcom­ing six months. These are col­lapsing across the board.  At the same time, the assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation remains rel­at­ively stable in the first month after the out­break of the war in Ukraine.

While the avail­ab­il­ity of metals is already partly lim­ited and occa­sion­ally impacts pro­duc­tion, the con­sid­er­able cost increases on the energy mar­kets are already threat­en­ing the exist­ence of many foundries, even though a gas embargo has not yet been decided.

The indir­ect effects of the over­all eco­nomic cost increases and the fra­gile inter­na­tional sup­ply chains will, how­ever, become more notice­able, espe­cially in the com­ing weeks.

Mean­while the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) dropped in March. The notice­able decrease of 0.12 points brings the index to 1.67 points. This marks the low­est level for seven 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