European Foundry Industry Sentiment

Novem­ber 2022: Small and Medium sized Enter­prises (SMEs) not taken into account

The European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) moves side­ways in Novem­ber. A minor improve­ment by 0.2 points brings the index to a value of 103.0 points. While busi­ness expect­a­tions for the next six months have declined again, assess­ments of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation sur­pris­ingly increased in Novem­ber. Over­all, both factors equal­ise each other in the cal­cu­la­tion of the FISI.

The extreme peaks in energy prices have not been noted recently. Nev­er­the­less, due to the still very high cost level in many coun­tries, gov­ern­ments are work­ing on meas­ures to reduce the bur­den. These so-called emer­gency meas­ures are reg­u­lated within the EU by the Tem­por­ary Crisis Frame­work as part of state aid law. On the one hand, com­plex and insuf­fi­cient relief pack­ages are already emer­ging from this; on the other hand, the crisis shows that a stra­tegic and prac­tical indus­trial policy is still only being dis­cussed inad­equately. While the Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act has been intro­duced in the USA just last month, the EU is still con­cerned with nego­ti­at­ing on the Car­bon Bor­der Adjust­ment Mech­an­ism (CBAM). This again might just become another case of “well meant and badly done” par­tic­u­larly bring­ing det­ri­mental pro­spects to small and medium-sized foundries who are already under sig­ni­fic­ant cost pressure.

Mean­while the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) decreased in Novem­ber. The decrease of 0.20 points brings the index to 0.54 points. The pro­duc­tion trend observed in recent months as well as the assess­ment of (export) order-book levels sig­ni­fic­antly decreased.

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