The CIELFFA Annual Meeting 2024 took place in Linz on November 12, 2024. The meeting began on Tuesday afternoon with the general meeting, which was opened by Dr. Foltz from the PwC consulting agency strategy&, who spoke about the latest developments in the automotive market. Among other things, he provided information on how strong the competition from Chinese brands in Europe currently is and which factors could promote or prevent growth. In general, developments on the automotive market are currently rather difficult to predict, so that we have to be prepared for volatile developments.

Mr. Schönemeyer then spoke about the CBAM and addressed various aspects such as the changes that the 'definitive regime' will bring from 2026 on or the risks arising from the fact that exports are not taken into account by the CBAM.

As a third contribution, Ms. Gabilondo (Arania) gave an very interesting overview of the developments on the cold rolling market and explained these in relation to the European economic development as well as to similar developments on the steel and automotive markets.

At the subsequent general meeting, CIELFFA members re-elected Mr. Ramis as President and Chairman for Economical Studies and Mr. Ullrich as Chairman for Technical Studies for three years. We congratulate both of them on their re-election and look forward to our continued cooperation!

The annual meeting ended with a networking dinner at the Promenadenhof in Linz.

The following day, all participants had the opportunity to visit EBNER in Leonding and find out about the latest technological developments.