'Without action on energy, foundries are condemned to death'

Ahead slowly, without enthusiasm. For the foundry sector, the third quarter closed with a partial recovery in production and revenues, although the comparison is with a particularly weak 2024 period. Despite a slight improvement between July and September, with production up 3.9% compared to the same period last year (revenue up 5.2%), foundries fear that they will close 2025 as a whole with a new drop in volumes.

The overall trend of the last four quarters, in fact, does not suggest a breakeven at the end of the year compared to the already very unsatisfactory levels of 2024. This is shown by the latest economic survey by the Centro Studi of Assofond - the Confindustria association representing Italian foundries - on the period July-September 2025.

'The third quarter confirms what we had already seen in the first part of the year,' emphasises Assofond chairman Fabio Zanardi. At the end of 2024, we reached the lowest point of a demand crisis from which there are still no concrete exit prospects after more than two years. The slight tendential rebound is only physiological, given that the third quarter of last year had gone very badly'.

If the weakness of demand from almost all the main client sectors is by now a fact that companies in the sector have been struggling with for some time,' Asssofond explained in a statement, 'once again undermining the competitiveness of Italian foundries are the energy costs, which in Italy remain significantly higher than in other major European countries:

'Italian energy-intensive SMEs,' Zanardi emphasises, 'find themselves in a truly paradoxical situation: they are too small to benefit fully from the concessions granted to large energy-intensive businesses. On the other hand, they are too energy-hungry to fall into the categories to which the 'Bollette Decree' issued last summer came to the rescue. The result? Without immediate action, we are condemned to death. Yet very little is needed to improve the situation. The Energy Release is in its final stages, after the OK of the Court of Auditors. But how long will it take now for the operating rules and for the mechanism to really start up? It must be done soon. Similarly, we need to hurry with the reimbursement of indirect Ets costs, which for the iron foundries represents an indispensable and due breath of vital oxygen. The 600 million fund has been earmarked, but if the portal for submitting applications is not opened by the end of the year, it risks not being usable. Again: where is the 'Energy Decree' that is supposed to annul the PSV/TTF differential worth almost €5/MWh on the cost of gas? This measure would be of great help to non-ferrous metal foundries, the main users of gas in our sector. The classic 'last mile' is missing. But at this rate it seems like an infinite distance, and we are running out of time'