EU vs. Turkey vs. China: How to Compare Casting Quotes Fairly

Cross-border casting sourcing decisions are among the most consequential - and most poorly analysed - decisions in industrial procurement. The instinct is to compare ex-works prices, add a rough freight estimate, and call it a landed cost comparison. This approach systematically underestimates the true cost of non-EU sourcing and leads to decisions that look attractive on a spreadsheet and prove expensive in practice.

This article builds a proper comparison framework. It is not anti-China or anti-Turkey. Both markets have genuine cost advantages for specific part types and volume profiles. The goal is to make the comparison honest.

The ex-works illusion

Ex-works price is where the supplier's cost ends. It is not where your cost begins. Between the factory gate in Ningbo and your production line in Stuttgart, there are freight costs, import duties, insurance, port handling, inland transport, and - critically - time. Each of these adds cost. Some of them are highly variable and hard to predict at the time the sourcing decision is made.

The correct comparison is Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) - the full delivered cost per unit, including every cost that changes as a result of the sourcing decision. This includes costs that appear in different budget lines and are easy to miss.

Building the TCO comparison: what to include

1. Freight and logistics

Ocean freight from China to a Northern European port runs approximately €150–400 per tonne for standard FCL shipments, depending on route, carrier, and market conditions. The 2021–2022 freight crisis demonstrated that these costs can spike by 4–6× in a short period, making any sourcing model built on pre-2020 freight rates dangerously optimistic.

Turkey is significantly cheaper to ship from - road freight to Central Europe runs €60–120/tonne depending on weight and volume, with transit times of 3–7 days versus 25–35 days for China. For parts with high turnover or tight delivery windows, this difference in lead time has an inventory carrying cost that most comparisons ignore.

2. Import duties

EU import duties on iron castings (HS codes 7325 and 7326) are typically 2.7–3.7% of the customs value (CIF - cost, insurance, freight). For Chinese-origin castings, there are no additional anti-dumping duties currently in place for most standard casting categories, though this has varied historically and is subject to change.

Turkish-origin castings benefit from the EU-Turkey Customs Union for industrial goods, meaning zero duty for most casting categories. This is a meaningful advantage that is frequently overlooked in Turkey vs. China comparisons - a 3% duty on a €5/kg Chinese casting is €0.15/kg that simply does not exist on the equivalent Turkish part.

India does not have a preferential trade agreement with the EU. Standard duty rates apply, and the EU-India free trade agreement currently under negotiation has not yet been concluded.

3. Quality cost

This is the most difficult cost to estimate in advance and the most significant cost to absorb in practice. Quality cost from non-EU sourcing includes incoming inspection (either your own or a third-party inspection service in the country of origin), higher incoming reject rates, sorting costs, and - in the worst case - field failures and recalls.

For safety-relevant castings (hydraulic components, structural parts, brake system components), the quality assurance infrastructure required to source from China or India is substantial. First Article Inspection, ongoing process audits, material certification requirements, and the cost of resolving quality escapes all need to be budgeted.

A conservative estimate for first-year quality cost premium from Chinese sourcing of a complex technical casting is 2–5% of part value. This premium typically reduces as the supplier matures, but it does not disappear.

4. Tooling ownership and protection

Pattern tooling for sand castings held at a Chinese foundry is, in practice, difficult to repatriate if the relationship breaks down. Legally you may own it; practically, recovering it is expensive and slow. The risk of needing to re-invest in tooling if a supplier relationship fails is a real cost that should be included in any long-term sourcing model, typically as an annualised tooling risk premium.

5. Currency risk

Contracts denominated in CNY or USD expose European buyers to currency fluctuation. Turkey has experienced significant lira depreciation, which can work in a buyer's favour but also creates supplier financial stress that can affect delivery reliability and quality investment. Hedging costs or the decision to absorb unhedged exposure should be included in the model.

What the full comparison looks like

The index below is based on CastCalc should-cost benchmarks for a standard grey iron part on comparable moulding lines across markets, with Germany set at 100. The relative gaps are larger than most published comparisons show - particularly between Germany and China - because German overhead and labour costs are among the highest in Europe, and Chinese foundry economics benefit from subsidised energy and capacity-first investment strategies that push real market prices below what a cost-up model would predict.

A note on China specifically: real market quotes, particularly CIF to a European port, can come in significantly below the should-cost benchmark. This is not a modelling error - it reflects a different industrial context. Chinese and Indian foundries often invest in capacity ahead of demand and price aggressively to fill it. The should-cost model reflects what an efficient foundry should charge to cover costs and earn a reasonable margin. When quotes sit below that, it is worth asking how sustainable they are over a 3-5 year supply relationship.

Index based on CastCalc should-cost benchmarks for standard grey iron, comparable moulding lines. Germany = 100. Effective landed cost includes duty and safety stock carrying cost. Freight is excluded from the index because it varies significantly with shipment weight, density, and current market rates — a full FTL from Turkey to Germany runs approximately €2,500-3,000 regardless of weight, making €/kg freight highly dependent on your specific volumes. Ocean freight from China and India adds further variability. May 2025.

The honest picture: where each market actually stands

China wins on ex-works cost for most standard casting categories. That is a real advantage, and trying to argue otherwise is not credible. Quality from established Chinese foundries that have invested in their processes is genuinely good - not the problem it was 15 years ago. What China struggles with is everything outside the factory gate: longer ordering cycles, higher safety stock requirements, less responsiveness to urgent changes, and communication that requires more effort and more time. These are manageable but not free. When a production line goes short, having a supplier 25 days away by sea is a structural problem that does not appear in any landed cost model.

Turkey is the market that most EU procurement teams should be paying more attention to. Proximity means freight is manageable, the customs union means no import duty, and many Turkish foundries have invested significantly in equipment over the last decade. Labour costs are rising - Turkish wages have increased substantially in recent years - but foundries have not yet fully absorbed these increases into their prices. That window will not stay open indefinitely. The practical challenge with Turkey is efficiency variability: the gap between the best Turkish foundries and the average is larger than in Germany or Poland. You can find very competitive, well-run operations - but you can also find foundries that quote aggressively and deliver inconsistently. Qualification matters more than in mature EU supply chains.

EU sourcing - particularly from Germany, Austria, or France - is losing the pure cost argument against both China and Turkey for most standard casting categories. The honest answer is: it is not competitive on price for parts where the specification does not require EU supply chain proximity. Where EU sourcing wins is on responsiveness, communication, supply chain stability, and the ability to react quickly when something goes wrong. These have real value, particularly for parts that are critical to production continuity - but they are not infinite value, and they should be quantified rather than assumed.

Eastern and Southern European markets - Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania - occupy an interesting middle ground. Labour costs are lower than Germany but rising, quality infrastructure is generally solid, and proximity eliminates the freight and duty disadvantages of Turkey. For companies already sourcing in Central Europe, these markets are often underexplored relative to their actual cost competitiveness.

Building the model

The practical challenge is that most procurement teams do not have a structured TCO model for casting sourcing. They have a spreadsheet with ex-works prices and a freight line. Building the full model requires current data on scrap and energy prices in each market, knowledge of applicable duty rates, freight benchmarks, and a realistic quality cost assumption.

CastCalc's 22-market coverage is designed specifically for this comparison. It gives you a should-cost benchmark for the same part geometry across multiple markets simultaneously - built on the same cost model, using current market data, so the comparison is genuinely apples-to-apples on the production cost side. You then layer in the freight, duty, and quality adjustments to arrive at a full TCO view.