European Foundry Industry Sentiment

Septem­ber 2021: Facing chal­lenges on many fronts

In Septem­ber, the European Foundry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) roughly main­tained its pre­vi­ous month’s level. The mar­ginal decrease of 0.1 points brings the index to a value of 109.6. A slightly improved assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation is off­set by more pess­im­istic expect­a­tions for the upcom­ing six months.

Broken down by fer­rous and non-fer­rous metals sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ences emerge in Septem­ber. While the situ­ation among iron and steel foundries has sta­bil­ised recently, non-fer­rous metal foundries in par­tic­u­lar, are cur­rently under con­sid­er­able pres­sure. On the one hand, the semi­con­ductor pro­cure­ment prob­lems of the vehicle man­u­fac­tur­ers are hav­ing an increas­ing impact on call-offs and orders for cast­ing products. On the other hand, energy prices, espe­cially elec­tri­city and gas prices, have skyrock­eted in most parts of Europe in recent weeks. The fact that the People’s Repub­lic of China is now lower­ing mag­nesium pro­duc­tion and thus almost sus­pend­ing the world sup­ply of mag­nesium and alu­minium also dir­ectly endangers the non-fer­rous foundries as well as the most import­ant cus­tomer sec­tors of our industry. Talks at the highest polit­ical level are urgently needed at this point, since in view of these very mul­ti­fa­ceted chal­lenges, it must be assumed that  a poten­tial and badly needed recov­ery will fail to mater­i­al­ise in the com­ing weeks and months.

At the same time, the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) remains on a high level in Septem­ber. The slight decrease of 0.02 points brings the index to its to 1.72 points. Only the pro­duc­tion trend of the past weeks cooled slightly recently.

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