European Foundry Industry Sentiment

Feb­ru­ary 2023: Crisis can­celled?

The European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) records a sig­ni­fic­ant upward cor­rec­tion with a plus of 2.76 index points in Feb­ru­ary. The pos­it­ive trend thus con­tin­ues for the fourth con­sec­ut­ive month, bring­ing the index to a value of 105.9 points. The main driver of this encour­aging momentum has recently been iron foundries. Over­all, the assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation and expect­a­tions are bright­en­ing across all mater­i­als. Mean­while, the lat­ter, com­ing from a low base, show the strongest increase.

Although incom­ing orders have been declin­ing for months, cast­ing pro­duc­tion remains stable due to suf­fi­cient stocks. While debates on eco­nomic policy are pre­dom­in­antly about large indus­trial cor­por­a­tions that are increas­ingly scep­tical of Europe as a busi­ness loc­a­tion in favour of North Amer­ica, the dis­ad­vant­ages of high energy prices will hit the European indus­trial sec­tor pro­gress­ively, if politi­cians do not bring about an effect­ive adjust­ment of the frame­work con­di­tions. The fact that a fatal pro­duc­tion col­lapse in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor has so far been avoided des­pite dra­matic cuts in the chem­ical industry and alu­minium smelt­ers, and that it is not to be expec­ted to the same extent in the near future as it was in the autumn of the pre­vi­ous year, should nev­er­the­less not be seen as a gen­eral all-clear.

Mean­while the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) hold its level in Feb­ru­ary. The increase of 0.02 points brings the index to 0.72 points. Over­all, the pro­duc­tion trend of the past months was more pos­it­ive than expec­ted, while the selling price expect­a­tions for the month ahead are drop­ping on a high level.

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 CAEF the European Foundry Asso­ci­ation 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