European Foundry Industry Sentiment

Octo­ber 2019: Are per­spect­ives bot­tom­ing out?

The European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment fell slightly in Octo­ber. The European foundries´ assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation was some­what worse than in the pre­vi­ous month. By con­trast, the out­look has improved slightly, but remains on a low level. This is in line with the slight improve­ment of the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator of the Euro area.
The trade ten­sions have eased due to no hard Brexit on 31st of Octo­ber and due to signs for a pos­sible par­tial agree­ment in the US-China con­flict. Nev­er­the­less, the export pro­spects remain fra­gile for the time being and poten­tial pun­it­ive tar­iffs on European pas­sen­ger car and com­pon­ent deliv­er­ies to the US are still being con­sidered. Against this back­ground and given declin­ing orders, the ques­tion arises to which extent the expect­a­tions will sta­bil­ise at a low level in the medium term.

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:

Sophie Stef­fen
Sec­ret­ary Com­mis­sion for Eco­nom­ics & Stat­ist­ics
phone: +49 211 68 71 — 301
sophie.steffen@caef.eu