European Foundry Industry Sentiment

May 2023: Down­hill slide picks up speed

The European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) records the third decrease in a row. Rat­ing of 2.7 index points lower than in April, the index reaches a value of 100.6 points in May. This marks the biggest drop since the out­break of the war in Ukraine. It is alarm­ing that the neg­at­ive trend is thus intensifying.

While order back­logs are being worked off, new orders con­tinue to col­lapse in many sec­tors. Mean­while, a turn­around is not in sight. At the same time, there is also a lack of inter­na­tional impulses that could stim­u­late demand via second-round effects.While, in the last months, the devel­op­ment of steel and iron foundries on the one hand and non-fer­rous metal foundries on the other hand was con­trary due to stat­ist­ical base effects, foundries of all mater­ial groups are cur­rently turn­ing neg­at­ive in their assess­ment of the busi­ness situ­ation com­pared to the pre­vi­ous month.

The Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) decreases by 0.32 points in May and brings the index to 0.19 points. This marks the biggest decline since the out­break of the pan­demic in Europe in April 2020. Over­all, the selling price expect­a­tions for the month ahead are decreas­ing together with the cur­rent pro­duc­tion level and the order book levels.

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