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Economics

European Foundry Industry Sentiment, October 2019: Are perspectives bottoming out?

The European Foundry Industry Sentiment fell slightly in October. The European foundries’ assessment of the current business situation was somewhat worse than in the previous month. By contrast, the outlook has improved slightly, but remains on a low level. This is in line with the slight improvement of the Business Climate Indicator of the Euro area.

The European Foundry Industry Sentiment fell slightly in October. The European foundries’ assessment of the current business situation was somewhat worse than in the previous month. By contrast, the outlook has improved slightly, but remains on a low level. This is in line with the slight improvement of the Business Climate Indicator of the Euro area.

The trade tensions have eased due to no hard Brexit on 31 October and due to signs for a possible partial agreement in the US-China trade conflict. Nevertheless, the export prospects remain fragile for the time being and potential punitive tariffs on European passenger car and component deliveries to the US are still being considered. Against this background and given declining orders, the question arises to which extent the expectations will stabilize at a low level in the medium term.

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The European Foundry Industry Sentiment Indicator (FISI ) is the earliest available composite indicator providing information on the European foundry industry performance. It is published by CAEF – the European Foundry Association 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.

Background information on CAEF

CAEF is the umbrella organization of the national European foundry associations. The organisation 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, CAEF 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.

CAEF represents 4,700 European foundries. Nearly 300,000 employees are generating a turnover of 43 billion euros. European foundries are recruiting 20,000 workers and engineers per year. The main customer industries are the automotive, the general engineering and the building industries as well as the electrical engineering industry. No industrial sector exists without using casted components.

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