European Foundry Industry Sentiment

The European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) increased by 0.4 points in June and reaches a value of 106.4 points. 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 ques­tion of how much gas Rus­sia will con­tinue to sup­ply in the com­ing weeks and months is the focus of pub­lic dis­cus­sions. At the same time, energy prices are already threat­en­ing the exist­ence of busi­nesses in many places. Switch­ing to altern­at­ive energy sources some­times requires hor­rendous invest­ments which, after two and a half years of the pan­demic, now come up against rising interest rates. Cli­ents of foundries also need to be aware of this. Thus, pro­du­cer prices for cast com­pon­ents con­tinue to rise.

Mean­while the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) decreased in May. The increase of 0.19 points brings the index to 1.47 points. After a rally in expect­a­tions of rising sales prices, which peaked in April, the situ­ation is eas­ing slightly. Mean­while, rising incom­ing orders are giv­ing the BCI a mod­er­ate boost.

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 EFF the European Foundry Asso­ci­ation every month and is based on sur­vey responses of the European foundry industry. The EFF 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.

EFF Con­tact:

Till­man van de Sand
Sec­ret­ary Com­mis­sion for Eco­nom­ics & Statistics
phone: +49 211 68 71 — 301
mail: tillman.vandesand@EFF.eu