The ordinary general assembly of Assofond member foundries held in Thiene (Vicenza-Italy), with the report provided by the Study Centre of the Association, focused also on the health state of Italian foundries and on its trend in the course of 2012. They highlighted in this way that in our Country no significant variations in terms of overall number of operating enterprises were surveyed in the sector. Today they reach the total number of 1,111 foundries distributed on the territory. It is on the contrary worth underlining the differences between the labour force employed in 2011 and the one calculated last year. For ferrous metal foundries the difference corresponds to 1.1% less of employees. In the non-ferrous sector the loss is more relevant: -2.9%. On December 31st direct workers employed in Italian foundries were 28,745 in all, subdivided into 14,182 in ferrous metal foundries and 14,563 operating in non-ferrous ones. For a complete survey of the foundry sector in Italy, Europe and the rest of the world, the reference document is represented also by the Focus published on page 14 of this same issue, but Assofond also underlined the decrease of the national production. It was equal to 11.5 percentage points less, corresponding to 1,960,915 tons produced. The total turnover dropped by 9% and it just grazed the amount of 7 billion Euros from the point of view of economic values.
