European Foundry Industry Sentiment

Novem­ber 2023: 

Industry holds steady: European Foundry Sec­tor sees mar­ginal improvement. 

This Novem­ber, the European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) has recor­ded a slight increase, keep­ing the index stable but clearly below the threshold of 100 points. With an increase of 0.6 index points, the index now stands at 91.6, up from 91.0 last month.

The industry has man­aged to stop its down­ward trend in the past month, mark­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant halt to the neg­at­ive devel­op­ment observed in 2023. The Index has sta­bil­ized just above the 90-point mark. Des­pite facing intense com­pet­i­tion and oper­at­ing in a chal­len­ging and pres­sur­ized industry envir­on­ment, it is note­worthy that the sec­tor is demon­strat­ing resi­li­ence and hold­ing up admir­ably well. European Foundries are wor­ried about how well they can com­pete inter­na­tion­ally, espe­cially with all the uncer­tainty about get­ting the mater­i­als they need. The anti­cip­a­tion of rising car­bon bor­der prices, the crit­ical raw mater­ial act (CRMA), and the Car­bon Bor­der Adjust­ment Mech­an­ism (CBAM) are cast­ing a shadow over the upcom­ing year.

Mean­while the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) stands at ‑0.39 index points in Novem­ber. This marks the fifth con­sec­ut­ive time that the BCI is below the crit­ical threshold of 0 index points. The index decreased once again by 0.06 points from ‑0.33. This month the neg­at­ive BCI can be attrib­uted this month espe­cially to the situ­ation of the assess­ment of export order-book levels has worsened. The ongo­ing geo­pol­it­ical ten­sions in both the Near East and Ukraine are play­ing a pivotal role in pro­pelling this development.

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:

Johannes Kappes
Sec­ret­ary Com­mis­sion for Eco­nom­ics & Stat­ist­ics
phone: +49 211 68 71 — 291
mail: johannes.kappes@caef.eu