EFF — The European Foundry Asso­ci­ation Announces — Depar­ture of Sec­ret­ary Gen­eral Fynn-Willem Lohe

The European Foundry Asso­ci­ation (EFF) today announces the depar­ture of Fynn-Willem Lohe, the Sec­ret­ary Gen­eral, effect­ive 31st Decem­ber 2023. Mr Lohe will be trans­ition­ing to a new lead­er­ship pos­i­tion within the foundry industry, mark­ing the end of his pos­i­tion as Sec­ret­ary Gen­eral. Fynn-Willem Lohe has been a driv­ing force behind EFF’s ini­ti­at­ives dur­ing his ten­ure as Sec­ret­ary Gen­eral start­ing in Octo­ber 2020. This period was marked by a per­man­ent state of chal­lenges ran­ging from CoVid-19, over the out­break of the Ukraine war to its con­sequences of an energy crisis and now the first signs of eco­nomic turmoil.

Dur­ing this time, EFF has achieved sev­eral mile­stones, such as intens­ifing the includ­ing fos­ter­ing col­lab­or­a­tion between mem­bers, advoc­at­ing for the industry’s interests on the European stage, and pro­mot­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity within the sec­tor towards mem­ber asso­ci­ations, foundries and policy-makers. The largest pro­jects in his office was the redevel­op­ment of the gov­ernance struc­ture (bye-laws) and refram­ing of EFF mis­sion as well as strategy. While bid­ding farewell to Mr Lohe, the Board is con­fid­ent in the resi­li­ence and strength of EFF. The asso­ci­ation will embark on a thor­ough and trans­par­ent search for a new Sec­ret­ary Gen­eral to carry for­ward the leg­acy of lead­er­ship and con­tinue the vital work of pro­mot­ing the interests of the European foundry industry.

The association’s pres­id­ent Chiara Danieli expresses her grat­it­ude on behalf of EFF to its mem­bers, part­ners, and stake­hold­ers for their con­tin­ued sup­port for Mr Lohe and the Gen­eral Sec­ret­ariat. Reg­u­lar updates on the recruit­ment pro­cess for the new Sec­ret­ary Gen­eral will be provided to ensure trans­par­ency and engagement.

Back­ground inform­a­tion on EFF:

EFF is the umbrella organ­isa­tion of the national European foundry asso­ci­ations. The organ­isa­tion, foun­ded in 1953, has 22 European mem­ber states and works to pro­mote the eco­nom­ical, tech­nical, legal and social interests of the European foundry industry. At the same time, EFF imple­ments activ­it­ies which aim at devel­op­ing national foundry indus­tries and co-ordin­at­ing their shared inter­na­tional interests. The Gen­eral Sec­ret­ariat is situ­ated in Düs­sel­dorf since 1997.

EFF rep­res­ents 4 400 European foundries. Nearly 260 000 employ­ees are gen­er­at­ing a turnover of 39 bil­lion Euro. European foundries are recruit­ing 20 000 work­ers and engin­eers per year. The main cus­tomer indus­tries are e.g. the auto­mot­ive, the gen­eral engin­eer­ing and the build­ing indus­tries as well as the elec­trical engin­eer­ing industry. No indus­trial sec­tor exists without using cas­ted components.

Fur­ther inform­a­tion at www.EFF.eu and EFF LinkedIn.

EFF Con­tact:

Johannes Kappes
phone: +49 211 68 71 — 291
johannes.kappes@EFF.eu