European Foundry Industry Sentiment

May 2021: Recov­ery con­tin­ues to be robust

The European Foundry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) con­tin­ues its recov­ery for the sixth con­sec­ut­ive month. In May it closed at 108.3 index points, around 1.1 points above the pre­vi­ous month’s level. The pos­it­ive trend con­tin­ues to be driven equally by an improved assess­ment of the situ­ation and more optim­istic expect­a­tions of the European foundries. While both aspects are bet­ter rated by the fer­rous foundries com­pared to the pre­vi­ous month, the cur­rent situ­ation of the non-fer­rous foundries has not improved recently. How­ever, their expect­a­tions for the next six months have increased significantly.

The con­tin­ued improve­ment in expect­a­tions is very prom­ising. Nev­er­the­less, prob­lems in the indus­trial sup­ply chains and mater­ial bot­tle­necks threaten fur­ther devel­op­ment. In the fra­gile situ­ation, dis­rup­tions in the sup­ply chains for other inter­me­di­ate products from cus­tom­ers of cast­ing products can also neg­at­ively affect call-offs and par­tially jeop­ard­ise the mean­while good capa­city util­isa­tion of the foundries.

At the same time, the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) also con­tin­ues to improve. After the record increase in the pre­vi­ous month, the recov­ery con­tin­ues dynam­ic­ally in May. The increase of 0.38 points raises the index to the new level of 1.5 points. Eas­ing of con­tact restric­tions in large parts of Europe has a par­tic­u­larly pos­it­ive effect on the gast­ro­nomy and tour­ism sec­tors. At the same time, the con­sumer spend­ing is increas­ing overall.

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