EFF Year­book 2021 published

In 2021, European foundries have recovered partly from the dra­matic reduc­tions caused by the pan­demic. Dis­rup­tions in the inter­na­tional sup­ply chains and rap­idly rising mater­ial and energy costs in the second half of the year pro­hib­ited a more pos­it­ive development.

Com­par­ing the industry with 2019, across all mater­i­als pro­duc­tion is still below the pre-crisis year 2019 by more than 6%. European foundries pro­duced 14,500,000 tons of cast­ings in 2021. The pro­duc­tion of the iron and steel foundries increased by 17.6% with a pro­duc­tion volume of 10,707.4 tons, while the non-fer­rous metal foundries pro­duced 3,801.9 tons, around 14.8% more than in 2020. The double-digit pro­duc­tion growth rates must undoubtedly be viewed against the back­drop of the sig­ni­fic­ant Corona-related decline in 2020. The strong pro­duc­tion growth in Tur­key, which is the only European coun­try already sig­ni­fic­antly exceed­ing the 2019 level, notice­ably over­states the catch-up effect in the over­all figures.

The year 2021 was marked by dis­rup­tions in the inter­na­tional sup­ply chains. One reason for this were rising Corona infec­tion num­bers and new restric­tions in many European and Asian coun­tries. Although the situ­ation has eased con­sid­er­ably in the course of the year, the com­pan­ies still have to bear the pan­demic-induced con­sequences. Cast­ing-intens­ive vehicle con­struc­tion in par­tic­u­lar was unable to main­tain the already weak fig­ures of the pre­vi­ous year. The semi­con­ductor crisis also had a neg­at­ive impact on the annual res­ults of high volume sup­pli­ers. The situ­ation is dif­fer­ent for foundries sup­ply­ing the mech­an­ical engin­eer­ing sec­tor. Many sec­tors repor­ted high order intake. Mean­while, costs for energy and mater­i­als have risen con­sid­er­ably for foundries, espe­cially in the second half of 2021.

In 2022, which began with the Rus­sian attack on Ukraine, the world eco­nomy is at risk of fur­ther struc­tural dis­rup­tion. Gov­ern­ment pro­grammes to sup­port the eco­nomy as well as private house­holds and cent­ral bank inter­ven­tions dom­in­ate the debates. Mean­while, it is essen­tial to under­stand the situ­ation of the foundry industry in the con­text of the past two years. For this the pub­lic­a­tion The European Foundry Industry 2021 offers import­ant back­ground know­ledge. It is now avail­able on the EFF web­site.

The pub­lic­a­tion provides a com­pre­hens­ive over­view of the rel­ev­ant data in unique depth and breadth. In addi­tion to these data, it includes reports on the eco­nomic devel­op­ments in the EFF mem­ber coun­tries and the foundry asso­ci­ations’ assess­ments of the most import­ant mar­ket devel­op­ments for castings.

EFF Con­tact:

Till­man van de Sand
phone: +49 211 68 71 — 301
tillman.vandesand@EFF.eu