European Foundry Industry Sentiment

Decem­ber 2020: European foundries close the crisis year with a cau­tiously pos­it­ive signal

After the European Foundry Sen­ti­ment Indic­ator (FISI) took a break in the recov­ery pro­cess in the pre­vi­ous month, it increased mod­er­ately again at the end of the year. The increase of 0.8 points brings the index to a value of 100.2. While the devel­op­ment of the cur­rent situ­ation is eval­u­ated dif­fer­ently depend­ing on the mater­ial, but is stable over­all, expect­a­tions for the next six months in par­tic­u­lar have increased sig­ni­fic­antly. Des­pite the in many cases sig­ni­fic­antly intens­i­fied pan­demic coun­ter­meas­ures, which are affect­ing life in large parts of Europe, the foundries are slightly more optim­istic about the com­ing six months.

The vac­cin­a­tions that began in Decem­ber in most European coun­tries raise hope to the com­pan­ies. Mean­while, the dif­fi­culties in execut­ing the vac­cin­a­tion cam­paigns, which had already become notice­able in some regions, were not anti­cip­ated when the data were col­lec­ted, nor were pos­sible influ­ences from more con­ta­gious mutated forms of the virus. The long-awaited con­sensus in the nego­ti­ations on a trade and cooper­a­tion agree­ment between the EU and the United King­dom will also first be reflec­ted in the data for the fol­low­ing month.

Mean­while, the Busi­ness Con­fid­ence Indic­ator (BCI) con­tin­ues its recov­ery. In Decem­ber, it increased by 0.2 points to an index value of ‑0.4 points and thus for the sev­enth time in a row.

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 (CAEF) every month and is based on sur­vey responses of the European foundry industry. The CAEF 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.

CAEF Con­tact:

Till­man van de Sand
Sec­ret­ary Com­mis­sion for Eco­nom­ics & Stat­ist­ics
phone: +49 211 68 71 — 301
mail: tillman.vandesand@caef.eu