European Foundry Industry Sentiment

July 2026: 

European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment improves in July 2026, but recov­ery remains uneven. FISI rises to 96.0 as Euro­zone man­u­fac­tur­ing con­tin­ues to expand. 

The European foundry industry recor­ded a fur­ther improve­ment in busi­ness sen­ti­ment in July 2026. The European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI), pub­lished monthly by EFF – European Foundry Fed­er­a­tion. increased to 96.0 points, con­firm­ing the gradual sta­bil­isa­tion observed in recent months. Nev­er­the­less, the indic­ator remains below the bench­mark level of 100, show­ing that the recov­ery of the European foundry sec­tor is still fra­gile and highly uneven across indi­vidual cast­ing segments.

The devel­op­ment of FISI should also be viewed against the back­ground of a slowly improv­ing European man­u­fac­tur­ing envir­on­ment. The Euro­zone Man­u­fac­tur­ing PMI reached 52.0 points in July, remain­ing above the crit­ical threshold of 50 and there­fore sig­nalling an expan­sion of man­u­fac­tur­ing activity.

At the same time, the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator (BCI) stood at ‑0.19, remain­ing in neg­at­ive ter­rit­ory des­pite the improve­ment in man­u­fac­tur­ing activ­ity. The com­bin­a­tion of a PMI above 50 and a still-neg­at­ive BCI illus­trates the mixed eco­nomic envir­on­ment facing European industry: pro­duc­tion activ­ity is recov­er­ing, but com­pan­ies remain cau­tious about demand, invest­ment and future busi­ness conditions.

Iron foundries improve, but expect­a­tions weaken

The situ­ation in European iron foundries improved notice­ably in July. The assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation increased by 1.4 points to 100.0 index points. This is an encour­aging sig­nal, bring­ing the assess­ment of cur­rent con­di­tions back to the bench­mark level. How­ever, expect­a­tions for the next six months moved in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion, decreas­ing by 1.1 points to 85.3.

The diver­gence between improv­ing cur­rent con­di­tions and weak­en­ing expect­a­tions indic­ates that iron foundries remain cau­tious about the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the recov­ery. Demand from major cus­tomer indus­tries remains uneven, and com­pan­ies con­tinue to oper­ate in an envir­on­ment char­ac­ter­ized by uncer­tainty regard­ing future orders, indus­trial invest­ment and pro­duc­tion volumes.

Steel foundries remain the weak­est segment

The steel cast­ing sec­tor con­tin­ues to face the most dif­fi­cult mar­ket con­di­tions among the major European foundry seg­ments. In July, the assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation of European steel foundries increased only mar­gin­ally, by 0.1 point to 74.3 index points. At the same time, expect­a­tions for the next six months decreased by 1.3 points to 97.6 points.

The very low assess­ment of the cur­rent situ­ation con­firms that steel foundries con­tinue to struggle with weak demand and insuf­fi­cient capa­city util­iz­a­tion. Although expect­a­tions remain sig­ni­fic­antly above the assess­ment of present con­di­tions, their decline in July sug­gests that com­pan­ies are becom­ing some­what more cau­tious about the pace of a future recovery.

Non-fer­rous foundries remain the strongest part of the industry

The situ­ation is con­sid­er­ably more pos­it­ive in the European non-fer­rous foundry sec­tor. In July 2026, the assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation increased by 1.3 points to 133.2 index points. At the same time, expect­a­tions for the next six months improved strongly, rising by 2.9 points to 149.0. Non-fer­rous foundries there­fore remain by far the strongest seg­ment of the European foundry industry. Both cur­rent con­di­tions and expect­a­tions are sub­stan­tially above the bench­mark level.

The seg­ment con­tin­ues to bene­fit from struc­tural demand con­nec­ted with light­weight com­pon­ents, elec­tri­fic­a­tion, energy tech­no­lo­gies and advanced indus­trial applic­a­tions. The July res­ults show that non-fer­rous foundries con­tinue to demon­strate con­sid­er­ably greater resi­li­ence than the fer­rous cast­ing sectors.

European man­u­fac­tur­ing recov­ery offers cau­tious optimism

The Euro­zone Man­u­fac­tur­ing PMI of 52.0 in July provides an import­ant pos­it­ive sig­nal for foundries. A PMI above 50 indic­ates expand­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing activ­ity and sug­gests that the broader indus­trial envir­on­ment is gradu­ally becom­ing more supportive.

This fol­lows the sta­bil­iz­a­tion already observed in the European foundry sec­tor in June, when EFF repor­ted the first mean­ing­ful improve­ment in busi­ness sen­ti­ment after sev­eral chal­len­ging months. How­ever, the July fig­ures show that the recov­ery has not yet trans­lated into equally strong con­fid­ence across all foundry segments.

European foundries remain exposed to weak and uneven demand from key cus­tomer indus­tries, high energy and pro­duc­tion costs, geo­pol­it­ical uncer­tainty and increas­ing global com­pet­i­tion. EFF has also high­lighted the import­ance of cre­at­ing a level play­ing field for European foundries in the con­text of the Car­bon Bor­der Adjust­ment Mech­an­ism (CBAM). The Fed­er­a­tion has warned that the cur­rent frame­work risks increas­ing the cost of impor­ted raw mater­i­als while leav­ing many impor­ted fin­ished foundry products out­side the mechanism’s scope. This imbal­ance rep­res­ents a sig­ni­fic­ant com­pet­it­ive­ness chal­lenge for an energy-intens­ive European industry already facing strong com­pet­i­tion from third-coun­try producers.

Out­look: sta­bil­iz­a­tion, but no broad-based recov­ery yet

The July 2026 FISI res­ults provide grounds for cau­tious optim­ism. The rise of the over­all indic­ator to 96.0, com­bined with a Man­u­fac­tur­ing PMI of 52.0, sug­gests that the European indus­trial eco­nomy is mov­ing in a more pos­it­ive dir­ec­tion. How­ever, the BCI of ‑0.19 and the sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ences between indi­vidual foundry seg­ments demon­strate that a broad-based recov­ery has not yet been achieved.

The con­trast is par­tic­u­larly strik­ing: non-fer­rous foundries report very strong cur­rent con­di­tions and expect­a­tions, while steel foundries con­tinue to oper­ate at his­tor­ic­ally weak levels. Iron foundries are exper­i­en­cing an improve­ment in their cur­rent situ­ation, but their expect­a­tions for the com­ing six months remain subdued.

For the European foundry industry, the com­ing months will there­fore be decis­ive. A sus­tain­able recov­ery will depend on stronger order intake from key cus­tomer sec­tors, con­tin­ued improve­ment in European man­u­fac­tur­ing, com­pet­it­ive energy prices and an EU indus­trial and trade policy cap­able of pro­tect­ing the com­pet­it­ive­ness of European production.

European foundries are stra­tegic­ally import­ant sup­pli­ers to the auto­mot­ive, machinery, energy, rail­way, aerospace, defense, con­struc­tion and infra­struc­ture sec­tors. Main­tain­ing a com­pet­it­ive European foundry industry is there­fore essen­tial not only for indi­vidual com­pan­ies, but also for resi­li­ent European indus­trial sup­ply chains and Europe’s long-term indus­trial sovereignty.

Table – FISI and BCI in 2026:

European Foundry Fed­er­a­tion (EFF) will con­tinue to mon­itor devel­op­ments through its monthly Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) and provide timely mar­ket intel­li­gence to poli­cy­makers, industry stake­hold­ers and European foundries

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 —  European Foundry Fed­er­a­tion 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.

Pur­chas­ing Man­agers’ Index (PMI) -  in the Euro area is an indic­ator of the eco­nomic health of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. It is based on such indic­at­ors as: new orders, invent­ory levels, pro­duc­tion, sup­plier deliv­er­ies and the employ­ment environment.

EFF Con­tact:

Wit­old Dobosz
Gen­eral Sec­ret­ariat
mail: info@eff-eu.org