Look­ing ahead to the year 2023, there are stronger signs of a reces­sion in sev­eral European eco­nom­ies. It remains unclear how strongly demand for cast com­pon­ents will decline. While order books are still at a good level in many mar­kets, incom­ing orders are already declin­ing notice­ably at the onset of winter.

The European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) decreased by 2.6 points in Septem­ber and reaches a value of 104.0 points. This marks the low­est index value in the last 21 months, while it is the sharpest month to month decline since March 2020. Both the expect­a­tions for the next six months and the assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation dropped sig­ni­fic­antly. The excep­tion­ally strong drop is also char­ac­ter­ised by the fact that the rat­ings point in the same dir­ec­tion across all metals.

The FISI is still stable in the hol­i­day month of August. How­ever, with the onset of the heat­ing sea­son and a steady slow­down in the eco­nomy, the com­ing period is expec­ted to be extremely rough. Thus, more and more busi­nesses are now being really hit by energy costs as old con­tracts expire and the num­ber of those who have to pro­duce under the new con­di­tions is now stead­ily increasing.

There has never been a greater dif­fer­ence between the assess­ment of the situ­ation and the expect­a­tions since the begin­ning of the data col­lec­tion. While the cur­rent situ­ation is still con­sidered pos­it­ive by many foundries due to the good order situ­ation in the mech­an­ical engin­eer­ing sec­tor, the expect­a­tions for the next six months are on the down­turn. Ten­sions are rising, espe­cially as signs of a slow­down in demand are intensifying.

After the sig­ni­fic­ant drop due to Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine, the busi­ness cli­mate of the European foundries is sta­bil­ising for the time being, des­pite all the uncer­tain­ties. While the assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation is slightly declin­ing, the expect­a­tions for the com­ing six months are improv­ing mod­er­ately. The his­toric drop of the FISI in recent weeks was, how­ever, due to the lat­ter. The fact that com­pan­ies’ expect­a­tions are rid­ing a roller­coaster given the great uncer­tain­ties is one of the few things that is moment­ar­ily certain.

The European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) increased by 0.6 points in May and reaches a value of 106.1 points. After the highest loss since the out­break of corona pan­demic in Europe in March 2020 the FISI has slightly recovered.
After the decline in the pre­vi­ous months was caused by a war-related drop in busi­ness expect­a­tions for the upcom­ing six months, European foundries are now increas­ingly exper­i­en­cing some pos­it­ive effects on their busi­ness situation.