European Foundry Industry Sentiment

March 2020: First impacts of COVID-19

Before the out­break of the coronavirus pan­demic, expect­a­tions indic­ated an end to the indus­trial slow­down. But in March the European Foundry Industry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator decreased. The assess­ment of the cur­rent busi­ness situ­ation of the European foundries declined and expect­a­tions for the fol­low­ing six months dropped. This was in line with the decrease of the Busi­ness Cli­mate Indic­ator for the Euro Area, reflect­ing man­agers´ des­cend­ing pro­duc­tion expectations.

This shows that the European Foundry Industry is feel­ing the con­sequences of the corona pan­demic. National gov­ern­ments and the EU have taken a vari­ety of steps in an attempt to con­tain the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus. There­fore, European foundries are facing busi­ness travel restric­tions and sup­ply short­age, intro­duced short-time work or have been even forced to stop pro­duc­tion com­pletely. In par­tic­u­lar, foundries sup­ply­ing the auto­mot­ive industry face post­pone­ments of orders. How severe will be the external shock? This will ulti­mately depend on when the eco­nomy finds its way back to normality.

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