CAEF Year­book 2020 published

​Data of unique scope and depth show the impact of the Covid-19 pan­demic on European foundries. While the European pro­duc­tion of non-fer­rous metals decreased by 19.2 % over­all, the pro­duc­tion of iron, nod­u­lar iron and steel cast­ings decreased by 19.8 % com­pared to 2019.

The Covid-19 pan­demic shaped social and eco­nomic life world­wide in 2020. In the wake of the rising infec­tion fig­ures European gov­ern­ments reacted with drastic meas­ures to reduce the pub­lic health risk and absorb the res­ult­ing eco­nomic dam­age. In spring, there­fore, the pro­duc­tion facil­it­ies of many foundries as well as their sup­pli­ers and cus­tom­ers were com­pletely shut down — often for sev­eral weeks — in numer­ous European coun­tries. After pro­duc­tion has restar­ted around sum­mer with great efforts and adap­ted hygiene con­cepts, there was a renewed increase in Covid-19 case num­bers towards the end of the year, which put a bur­den on eco­nomic recov­ery. Gov­ern­ment sup­port meas­ures and the high adapt­ab­il­ity and per­form­ance of the indus­trial sec­tor pre­ven­ted more det­ri­mental distortions.

In addi­tion to the chal­lenges dir­ectly related to the infec­tion situ­ation in the com­pan­ies, the European foundry industry suffered from prob­lems on both sides, sup­ply and demand. While particlu­larly the cyc­lic­ally sens­it­ive and cast­ing-intens­ive auto­mot­ive industry in Europe, was in deep crisis, prob­lems in logist­ics were already becom­ing appar­ent. The plan­ning reli­ab­il­ity for foundries was thus con­sid­er­ably impaired.

The cur­rent devel­op­ments in the European foundry industry and the mar­ket for cast­ings can only be seen against the back­ground of the year 2020. On the one hand, it is neces­sary to under­stand stat­ist­ical base effects, and on the other hand, the chal­lenges asso­ci­ated with the eco­nomic recov­ery go back to the devel­op­ments of the pre­vi­ous year. Mean­while, the indus­trial trans­form­a­tion towards cli­mate neut­ral­ity has ten­ded to intensify dur­ing the pan­demic. The chal­lenges and oppor­tun­it­ies for foundries have thus become even more diverse in their own pro­duc­tion pro­cesses and in the stra­tegic con­sid­er­a­tion of cus­tomer segments.

Finally, for the European foundry industry, the CAEF pub­lic­a­tion The European Foundry Industry 2020 provides a com­pre­hens­ive over­view of the rel­ev­ant data in unique depth and breadth. In addi­tion to these data, the pub­lic­a­tion includes reports on the eco­nomic devel­op­ments in the CAEF mem­ber coun­tries and the foundry asso­ci­ations’ assess­ments of the most import­ant mar­ket devel­op­ments for castings.

Down­load the CAEF year­book 2020 here.

CAEF Con­tact:

Till­man van de Sand
phone: +49 211 68 71 — 301
tillman.vandesand@caef.eu