South Africa and India absent.

The 9th BRICS International Foundry Forum took place during the 18th FENAF (Latin American Foundry Fair) exhibition that was held in the Pro Magno Event Center in São Paulo, Brazil in September 2019. At the same time ABIFA, the Brazilian Foundry Association, celebrated their 50th anniversary.

However, there were two notable absentees from the forum – India and South Africa. Only delegates from Russia, China and Brazil attended and one has to wonder how long the so-called BRICS Foundry Association will continue to exist if all members from the alliance do not attend.

The next BRICS International Foundry Forum is scheduled to take place in Moscow, Russia in 2020. It will be interesting to see if this does take place considering what happened in 2019. It seems that relationships between the BRICS countries is breaking down, well in the foundry industry anyway.

CAEF represented at the 9th International BRICS Foundry Forum 2019
Luis Filipe Villas-Boas, President of the CAEF Executive Committee, represented CAEF (The European Foundry Association) at the International BRICS Foundry Forum. Villas-Boas was invited to give the opening lecture of the 9th Foundry Forum. He presented the current status and perspectives of the European foundry industry. In addition, he explained the economic situation in Europe and reported on the latest figures. Finally, Luis Filipe Villas-Boas presented the foundries’ expectations based on the Foundry Industry Sentiment (FISI) and pointed out future challenges as well as political fields of action.