European Foundry Industry Sentiment

January2023: New year, same picture

The European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) remained at the pre­vi­ous months level of 103.1 points. How­ever, fer­rous and non-fer­rous metal foundries show dif­fer­ent devel­op­ments in Janu­ary, which equal­ise in total. While the European iron foundries recor­ded a drop in the assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation at the start of the year, with expect­a­tions remain­ing unchanged, the non-fer­rous foundries are more optim­istic on both points than in the pre­vi­ous month.

Even if the assess­ments described vary depend­ing on the mater­ial, the over­all pic­ture since Octo­ber has been rel­at­ively static. While ques­tions such as the future level of energy prices are cur­rently more import­ant for the foundry industry than ever before, the industry has ulti­mately come through the winter without suf­fer­ing exist­en­tial dam­age so far. Fears of energy short­ages have not mater­i­al­ised. And from today’s point of view, the out­look also does not indic­ate a major col­lapse. Although the energy mar­kets have calmed down con­sid­er­ably in the mean­time, some foundries in Europe will be con­fron­ted with high energy prices with the begin­ning of the year, because new con­tracts, which were con­cluded in the light of the crisis, partly only came into force at the turn of the year.

Mean­while the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) increased in Janu­ary. The increase of 0.12 points brings the index to 0.69 points. Over­all, the assess­ment of export order-book levels and the pro­duc­tion expect­a­tions for the months ahead strengthen the BCI in Janu­ary. On the other side the expect­a­tions for selling price levels for the months ahead decreases.

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