The European Foundry Fed­er­a­tion appoints Ain­hoa Ond­ar­za­bal as new Sec­ret­ary General

28 April 2025: 

The European Foundry Fed­er­a­tion appoints Ain­hoa Ond­ar­za­bal as new Sec­ret­ary General

Düs­sel­dorf, 28 April 2025 – The European Foundry Fed­er­a­tion (EFF), the umbrella organ­isa­tion rep­res­ent­ing 4,400 foundries across 22 European coun­tries, is pleased to announce the appoint­ment of Ms. Ain­hoa Ond­ar­za­bal as its new Sec­ret­ary General.

With more than 25 years of inter­na­tional exper­i­ence across the pub­lic and private sec­tors, Ms. Ond­ar­za­bal brings a wealth of expert­ise in indus­trial policy, inter­na­tion­al­iz­a­tion, and stra­tegic lead­er­ship. She most recently served as Gen­eral Dir­ector of Bas­queTrade & Invest­ment, the pub­lic agency respons­ible for pro­mot­ing the inter­na­tion­al­iz­a­tion of com­pan­ies of the Basque region. In this role, she suc­cess­fully developed the organ­iz­a­tion, while estab­lish­ing 8 inter­na­tional offices across key global markets.

Her career includes senior pos­i­tions within the Gov­ern­ment of the Basque Coun­try, where she was respons­ible for design­ing and imple­ment­ing inter­na­tional strategies to enhance the region’s indus­trial com­pet­it­ive­ness. Ms. Ond­ar­za­bal holds a Master’s degree in Exec­ut­ive Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion and is flu­ent in Span­ish, Basque, Eng­lish, Ger­man, and Chinese.

“We are delighted to wel­come Ain­hoa Ond­ar­za­bal to the European Foundry Fed­er­a­tion,” said Chiara Danieli, Pres­id­ent of EFF. “Her stra­tegic vis­ion, deep under­stand­ing of global indus­trial dynam­ics, and proven capa­city to con­nect insti­tu­tions and busi­nesses make her the right per­son to guide EFF in a cru­cial period for our industry. I am con­fid­ent she will play a key role in help­ing us tackle cur­rent chal­lenges and shape a com­pet­it­ive, sus­tain­able future for European foundries.”

Fol­low­ing this appoint­ment, the Federation’s Gen­eral Sec­ret­ariat will move from Düs­sel­dorf, where it has been based since 1997, to Bil­bao, Spain, align­ing with the loc­a­tion of the new Sec­ret­ary Gen­eral. This change high­lights the EFF’s truly European iden­tity, with its legal entity registered in France, admin­is­trat­ive headquar­ters in Ger­many, and exec­ut­ive lead­er­ship now oper­at­ing from Spain.

Ms. Ondarzabal’s appoint­ment as Sec­ret­ary Gen­eral of the European Foundry Fed­er­a­tion comes at a pivotal moment for the European foundry industry, which is nav­ig­at­ing com­plex chal­lenges includ­ing the green and digital trans­ition, work­force renewal, sup­ply chain resi­li­ence, and the pur­suit of com­pet­it­ive­ness in an inter­na­tional con­text where European com­pan­ies face a sig­ni­fic­ant dis­ad­vant­age com­pared to for­eign com­pet­it­ors due to higher pro­duc­tion costs, heav­ier bur­eau­cratic bur­dens, and stricter regulations.

Back­ground inform­a­tion on EFF

EFF is the umbrella organ­isa­tion of the national European foundry asso­ci­ations. The organ­isa­tion, foun­ded in 1953 as CAEF (Comité des Asso­ci­ations Européennes de Fonderie), has 22 European mem­ber states and works to pro­mote the eco­nom­ical, tech­nical, legal and social interests of the European foundry industry. At the same time, EFF imple­ments activ­it­ies which aim at devel­op­ing national foundry indus­tries and co-ordin­at­ing their shared inter­na­tional interests. The Gen­eral Sec­ret­ariat is situ­ated in Düs­sel­dorf since 1997. EFF rep­res­ents 4 400 European foundries. Nearly 260 000 employ­ees are gen­er­at­ing a turnover of 39 bil­lion Euro. European foundries are recruit­ing 20 000 work­ers and engin­eers per year. The main cus­tomer indus­tries are e.g. the auto­mot­ive, the gen­eral engin­eer­ing and the build­ing indus­tries as well as the elec­trical engin­eer­ing industry. No indus­trial sec­tor exists without using cas­ted components.

Fur­ther inform­a­tion at eff-eu.org/ and LinkedIn EFF.

EFF Con­tact:

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