European Foundry Industry Sentiment

Jaun­ary 2024: 

Des­pite exist­ing uncer­tain­ties, FISI increases in Janu­ary. FISI climbs to almost 93 index points.

This Janu­ary, the European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) records a delight­ful increase, mark­ing an upswing to 92.9 index points. This adjust­ment exceeds the neg­at­ive
devel­op­ment observed in Decem­ber, as the index exper­i­ences an increase of 2.9 points, set­tling at 92.9 com­pared to 90.0 the pre­vi­ous month.

A new year always bears the pos­sib­il­ity of change and a pos­it­ive turn­around. Des­pite the many dif­fi­culties that foundries have had to endure in recent years, the industry remains robust. Even
though the industry has noticed a lack of sub­sidies, sup­port, or any kind of relief, the FISI still man­aged to increase in the second month of the new year. This res­ult is par­tially due to the
fact that we have received mixed res­ults from the mem­ber asso­ci­ations for the cur­rent month. Fur­ther­more, it has to be men­tioned that the sig­ni­fic­ant increase in Janu­ary is pre­dom­in­antly
attrib­uted to the Non-Fer­rous Sec­tor. Per­sist­ent chal­lenges such as elev­ated energy prices, labour short­ages, and uncer­tain­ties sur­round­ing the avail­ab­il­ity of raw mater­i­als per­sist­ently exert pres­sure on foundries across Europe. These factors, when con­sidered col­lect­ively, cre­ate a com­plex envir­on­ment that neces­sit­ates stra­tegic plan­ning and adapt­a­tion to ensure the resi­li­ence and sus­tain­ab­il­ity of
the foundry industry in the region.

Mean­while the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) stands at ‑0.42 index points in Janu­ary. This marks the sev­enth con­sec­ut­ive time that the BCI is below the crit­ical threshold of 0 index
points. The index increased once again by 0.03 points from ‑0.45 in Decem­ber. This month the neg­at­ive BCI can be attrib­uted as in the pre­vi­ous month mainly to the situ­ation of the
assess­ment of export order-book levels. The ongo­ing geo­pol­it­ical ten­sions in both the Middle East and Ukraine are play­ing a pivotal role in pro­pelling this development.

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:

Johannes Kappes
Sec­ret­ary Com­mis­sion for Eco­nom­ics & Stat­ist­ics
phone: +49 211 68 71 — 291
mail: johannes.kappes@EFF.eu