European Foundry Industry Sentiment

Decem­ber 2023: 

2024 and the asso­ci­ated uncer­tain­ties are cast­ing their shad­ows ahead: FISI drops to 90 index points. 

This Decem­ber, the European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) records a not­able decrease, mark­ing a down­turn in the index to 90 points. This adjust­ment neg­ates the pos­it­ive
devel­op­ment observed in Novem­ber, as the index exper­i­ences a decline of 1.6 points, set­tling at 90.0 com­pared to 91.6 the pre­vi­ous month.

As we con­clude the year 2023, it becomes evid­ent that the foundry industry con­tin­ues to face chal­lenges. The FISI, which com­menced the year at 103.1 index points in Janu­ary, now reflects the impact of per­sist­ent chal­lenges such as high energy prices, geo­pol­it­ical ten­sions and con­flicts, (skilled) labour short­ages, and uncer­tain­ties sur­round­ing the avail­ab­il­ity of raw
mater­i­als. These factors col­lect­ively exert sub­stan­tial pres­sure on foundries across Europe. Des­pite strug­gling with these ongo­ing head­winds, the foundry industry exhib­its remark­able
resi­li­ence. Foundries through­out Europe are nav­ig­at­ing through the com­plex­it­ies, demon­strat­ing their adapt­ab­il­ity in the face of adversit­ies. It is worth not­ing that the absence of
sub­sidies and sup­port from national and European poli­cy­makers adds to the industry’s bur­den. In con­trast, com­pet­it­ors in Asia and the United States find them­selves in rel­at­ively
advant­age­ous pos­i­tions, encoun­ter­ing fewer chal­lenges in these areas.

Mean­while the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) stands at ‑0.45 index points in Decem­ber. This marks the sixth con­sec­ut­ive time that the BCI is below the crit­ical threshold of 0 index
points. The index decreased once again by 0.06 points from ‑0.39 in Novem­ber. This month the neg­at­ive BCI can be attrib­uted as in the pre­vi­ous month mainly to the situ­ation of the
assess­ment of export order-book levels. The ongo­ing geo­pol­it­ical ten­sions in both the Middle 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