European Foundry Industry Sentiment

June 2019: Down­ward trend, but still on a bear­able level

The deteri­or­a­tion of the European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment in June was less marked than the slow­down of the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator. Both the assess­ment of the cur­rent status and the expect­a­tions for the next six months eased com­pared to the pre­vi­ous month. The decline of the foundry sen­ti­ment was driven by lower con­fid­ence in all cast­ing mater­i­als. This was par­tic­u­larly due to the weaker per­form­ance of the foundries´ main cus­tomer indus­tries – the auto­mot­ive and gen­eral engin­eer­ing sec­tor – in com­par­ison to the high level in 2018.
Moreover, the ongo­ing trade dis­pute between the US and EU could have an impact on the mood of the European foundry industry in the com­ing months as the US admin­is­tra­tion has pro­posed pla­cing tar­iffs also on a few cast­ing com­pon­ents. This shows that the geo­pol­it­ical uncer­tain­ties are not decreasing.

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 (EFF) 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:

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