The survey differentiated between the current situation in the company and the outlook. For the current situation in calendar week 11, companies reported supply bottlenecks for occupational safety equipment and disinfectants. In particular, there is a shortage of isopropanol. This may lead to foundries having to stop production in the short term due to a lack of available industrial alcohol, which is currently needed for disinfection. Overall, 59% of the companies surveyed have already felt the effects of the coronavirus crisis, while only 19% have not.

Terminations not ruled out

In terms of the future, the fear that employees could be absent (70%) is ahead of "sales difficulties" and "supply bottlenecks" (57% each) as well as "restrictions on business travel" (56%). When it comes to bottlenecks, for example, the "supply of raw materials, preliminary products and auxiliary materials from Italy" is specifically mentioned. There are a number of concerns regarding logistics and supply chains. As a result of interruptions, "production decline and downtime", "short-time working" and "redundancies" are specifically mentioned.

Almost 40% of the companies surveyed had already introduced short-time working or were planning to do so in the immediate future. The measures of the short-time work scheme adopted by the federal government are considered sufficient by 47%, but 31% also consider them insufficient. There is a demand for concrete liquidity support, for example through loans, as well as an extension of the short-time working allowance to 24 months.

"The situation in some companies is threatening their existence. The financial aid must also be structured in such a way that the repayment of any loans does not overburden the companies, not to mention other burdens," says BDG Managing Director Max Schumacher.

Does the coronavirus have the potential to trigger a recession?

Almost two thirds of the member companies surveyed answered the question of whether the coronavirus has the potential to trigger a recession in the affirmative. There was unanimity on this question among the German foundries surveyed: no company answered in the negative.

It should be noted in the overall results that the survey was conducted in week 11 - the last week before the announcement of more drastic measures in the fight against the spread of the virus. According to the BDG, even clearer answers and results could be expected for some questions in a survey in the current week 12.