European Foundry Industry Sentiment

Feb­ru­ary 2024: 

Fol­low­ing a rise for the second month straight, FISI now stands at 94 index points.

In Feb­ru­ary 2024, the European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) exper­i­enced a pleas­ing surge, with an uptick to 94.0 index points. This devel­op­ment reflects the second
con­sec­ut­ive increase for the FISI, the index exper­i­ences an increase of 1.1 points, set­tling at 94.0 com­pared to 92.9 in the pre­vi­ous month.
The cur­rent uptick in sen­ti­ment may partly be attrib­uted to a mod­er­a­tion in the situ­ation across pro­cure­ment mar­kets, con­trib­ut­ing to a mild eas­ing of pres­sures. The pri­cing dynam­ics of raw mater­i­als have settled into a new nor­mal, per­sist­ing at levels that exceed those observed prior to the onset of the pan­demic. How­ever, it is essen­tial to high­light that the over­all situ­ation remains tense, with con­sid­er­able obstacles still to over­come. The industry faces ongo­ing chal­lenges like fluc­tu­at­ing demand and global eco­nomic uncer­tain­ties. These factors
under­score the fra­gil­ity of the cur­rent improve­ment and emphas­ize the need for sus­tained efforts to sta­bil­ize and strengthen the sec­tor. While the small improve­ment in Feb­ru­ary is a
pos­it­ive sign, it’s import­ant to remem­ber that the European foundry industry still has a tough road ahead. Stay­ing alert and tak­ing pro­act­ive steps will be vital to deal with the ongo­ing
chal­lenges and ensure that the industry stays strong in the face of adversity.

Mean­while the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) remains unchanged at ‑0.42 index points, mir­ror­ing its value from Janu­ary. This marks the eighth con­sec­ut­ive month that the BCI has
lingered below the crit­ical threshold of 0 index points. Once again, the neg­at­ive trend in the BCI primar­ily stems from the assess­ment of export order-book levels, a reflec­tion of per­sist­ent
chal­lenges in this aspect. The ongo­ing geo­pol­it­ical ten­sions in regions such as the Middle East and Ukraine con­tinue to exert sig­ni­fic­ant influ­ence on this tra­ject­ory, con­trib­ut­ing to the
sus­tained stag­na­tion in 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 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:

Johannes Kappes
Sec­ret­ary Com­mis­sion for Eco­nom­ics & Stat­ist­ics
phone: +49 211 68 71 — 291
mail: johannes.kappes@caef.eu