Fruit and Vegetable Canning (United States) — NAICS 311421

An investor's primer. NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the U.S. government's standard code for an industry.

1. Overview

This is the business of taking fresh fruits and vegetables — tomatoes, corn, green beans, peaches, pineapple — and cooking, sealing, and preserving them in cans and jars so they keep on a shelf for years. It is one of the oldest branches of American food manufacturing, and today a mature, slow-growing, low-margin one. The federal government counts about 802 canning plants employing roughly 44,900 people, with industry shipments of about $27.4 billion in 2022.[1][2]

Why an investor should care: canned produce is a defensive, staple business — people keep buying it in recessions, and demand is steadier than most consumer goods — but it is also a commodity-processing business squeezed between farm-crop volatility on one side and the cost of the steel can on the other. Margins are thin and cyclical, and 2025 delivered a landmark stress event: the 139-year-old Del Monte Foods filed for Chapter 11 (Ch. 11 = court-supervised reorganization) and was broken up and sold.[5][7]

There is no clean way to "buy the industry." The one near-pure public play is a small, thinly traded processor (Seneca Foods); most household canning brands sit inside large diversified food companies, and some of the biggest packers are private companies and grower cooperatives that ordinary investors cannot buy at all. Public and private routes both exist, and both matter here — this primer covers each.

2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS 311421 covers plants that preserve fruits and vegetables by canning, pickling, or making jams, jellies, and preserves. The Census definition includes canned, pickled, or brined fruits and vegetables; canned juices; jams and jellies; ketchup, salsa, chili and spaghetti sauces, barbecue sauce, and tomato paste; pickles, relishes, and sauerkraut.[3] In practice the major product lines are:

• Canned and jarred vegetables (corn, beans, peas, carrots)
• Canned fruit and fruit cups (peaches, pears, pineapple, fruit cocktail)
• Tomato products — canned whole/diced tomatoes, sauce, paste, ketchup, salsa (tomatoes are the single largest product line in the industry)
• Pickles, relishes, and canned juices
• Jams, jellies, and preserves

Note that "canned" is a process description, not necessarily a metal-package description. FDA guidance uses "low-acid canned food" as shorthand for thermally processed food in hermetically sealed containers, which can include glass bottles and flexible pouches. High-temperature processing under pressure creates commercial sterility and shelf stability without refrigeration — thermal processing and a hermetic seal, not necessarily chemical preservatives, provide the preservation hurdle.[20]

What it excludes (adjacent NAICS codes an investor should not confuse it with):

• 311422 Specialty Canning — canned soups, baked beans with meat, canned pasta meals, canned baby food. (This is why canned soup makers are not in this code.)
• 311411 / 311412 Frozen — frozen fruits and vegetables and frozen specialty foods.
• 311423 Dried and Dehydrated Food — raisins, dried fruit, dehydrated potatoes and soups.
• 311710 Seafood — canned tuna and other seafood is a separate seafood code.
• 311941 Mayonnaise, Dressing, and Prepared Sauce — salad dressing, mayonnaise (though ketchup and tomato sauce stay in 311421).
• Soft-drink manufacturing — fruit drinks, cocktails, and "-ades" fall under soft drinks rather than 311421.[3]
• Farming (NAICS 111) and grocery retail (NAICS 445) — growing the produce and selling the can to shoppers are separate industries.

Operating model. Plants receive produce during a short harvest window; wash, sort, peel, cut, and sometimes blanch it; fill containers with product and water, brine, syrup, or sauce; seal; thermally process in a retort or use an aseptic system; cool; inspect; label; and warehouse the finished inventory. Seneca reports that most of its production occurs from July through September; inventories and receivables rise during the pack and selling seasons, while the off-season is used for maintenance and equipment changes.[8] Large operators may integrate seed, grower contracting, harvesting, can-making, processing, warehousing, and logistics, while also packing store brands or other companies' brands.

Ownership mix. The federal count is about 709 firms operating 802 establishments — so most firms run a single plant.[1][2] Ownership spans four types: (1) large diversified public food companies whose canning lines are one slice of a much bigger business (Conagra, Kraft Heinz); (2) a small number of focused processors, the largest public one being Seneca Foods; (3) grower-owned cooperatives (Pacific Coast Producers); and (4) private, often family- or single-owner companies — including The Morning Star Company, the world's largest tomato processor.[7][12]

3. How big it is

Ground-truth federal figures for NAICS 311421:

That works out to roughly 56 employees per plant and average pay near $62,000, and average shipments of about $39 million per firm — a picture of medium-sized industrial plants, not tiny operators.[1][2] The 2023 Annual Integrated Economic Survey estimated $26.7 billion of sales or shipments, $2.7 billion of payroll, and 43,389 employees — broadly consistent with the 2022 benchmark.[21] Because this is a capital-intensive factory industry (not one dominated by micro-businesses, gig workers, or government), the federal statistics capture it well; there is little of the undercount that distorts head-count in, say, construction trades or child care.

One honesty note on "market size" figures you'll see elsewhere: private research firms quote larger numbers — for example IBISWorld puts "Canned Fruit & Vegetable Processing" at about $50.4 billion for 2025 — because they use a broader product definition and a later year.[4] This primer anchors on the federal $27.4 billion (2022) shipments figure, which is the like-for-like measure of what these plants actually ship.[2] For scale, the U.S. state that supplies most of the raw material — California — grew about 11.6 million tons of processing tomatoes in 2025 alone.[11]

4. The investable universe

There is no pure public "canning" stock of size and no canning-specific fund. The closest thing to a pure play is small and thinly traded; everything larger is a diversified food company where canning is one line among many. The table separates the two.

Public companies (tickers; approximate annual revenue — company-wide, not canning-only):

Major private and cooperative owners (not publicly traded):

• The Morning Star Company (Woodland, CA) — the world's largest tomato processor, handling roughly 40% of California's processing-tomato crop, revenue above $1 billion, and a sole private owner. Not investable.[12]
• Pacific Coast Producers — a grower-owned cooperative with approximately 160 grower owners and more than 4,000 employees, packing canned tomatoes and fruit largely for foodservice and private-label customers. Acquired Del Monte and S&W shelf-stable fruit inventory and licensing rights for the United States, Mexico, and Puerto Rico in March 2026.[7][25]
• Lakeside Foods — a family-owned processor with 15 locations, nearly 1,200 year-round employees, and more than 1,000 seasonal employees, with heavy exposure to retailer store labels.[26]
• Red Gold — describes itself as the largest privately held U.S. tomato-products manufacturer.[27]
• McCall Farms — a family-owned Southern vegetable and fruit canner with more than 1,000 employees at a 900,000-square-foot facility.[28]

Takeaway: public-market investors get mostly diluted, indirect exposure. The pure-play (Seneca) is a small-cap, family-controlled, no-dividend commodity processor; the big brands live inside staples conglomerates. The Del Monte restructuring has created a second significant public exposure through DMC, though that company retains substantial fresh-produce operations.

5. How the money works

A cannery is a seasonal, capital-intensive, thin-margin commodity processor — closer in economics to a metals mill than to a branded-snack maker. The metrics that decide whether an owner makes money:

• Gross margin is thin and swings hard. Seneca — the best public window into pure canning — earned a gross margin of about 9.5% in fiscal 2025, recovering to 13.9% in fiscal 2026 as pack costs normalized; its earnings per share (EPS) fell from $8.64 to $5.96 in fiscal 2025, mostly because a rainy growing season and higher costs squeezed the pack.[8][22] A few points of margin is the whole game.

• The "pack" and capacity utilization. Crops are harvested in a short window, so plants run flat-out during the pack season, build a full year of inventory at once, then sell it down over the following 12 months. That ties up large amounts of working capital in inventory and makes plant utilization — filling the lines during harvest — central to unit costs. Seneca's permanent workforce was supplemented by approximately 4,010 seasonal employees at its summer 2025 peak.[8]

• Input costs, and the can itself. The two big variable costs are the raw produce (bought on contracted acreage from growers) and the steel can. Packaging can run to roughly a third of the cost of a finished can of food, which is why tinplate-steel prices (Section 7) move the whole industry's economics. Energy and labor round it out.

• Crop and weather risk. A poor growing season cuts volumes and raises per-unit costs at the same time — exactly what compressed Seneca's fiscal 2025.[8] A bumper crop can produce excess packs, full warehouses, and price competition. Seneca identifies field corn, soybeans, and wheat as competing uses for acreage.[22] Owners hedge this with grower contracts and geographic spread, but weather is the wildcard.

• Branded vs. private-label mix. Branded cans earn higher margins but are steadily losing shelf share to cheaper store brands; co-packing and private-label work brings volume at razor-thin margins. Mix drives profitability. Seneca reported its ten largest customers represented 53% of fiscal 2025 sales, illustrating buyer power.[8]

• Wastewater and environmental compliance. Washing, blanching, and processing generate high biochemical oxygen demand, suspended solids, oil, and grease; covered plants face federal effluent standards incorporated into discharge permits, adding to fixed operating costs.[29]

• The balance sheet is the silent killer. Because margins are thin and cyclical, leverage is dangerous. Seneca used strong cash flow to cut net debt by about $297 million in fiscal 2025 and survived a bad year; Del Monte, loaded with roughly $1.2 billion of debt after a 2014 buyout, did not — its interest bill nearly doubled and it filed for bankruptcy.[8][5][6]

In short: owners make money by running plants full during harvest, controlling can and crop costs, holding a defensible branded or private-label niche, and keeping debt low enough to survive a bad crop year.

6. What drives demand

• Value-seeking and food security. Canned produce is cheap, storable, and non-perishable, so demand holds up — and can rise — when household budgets tighten or shoppers stock pantries. USDA's 2023 price comparison found canned corn at $0.68 per cup equivalent and canned green peas at $0.77, versus $1.42 for fresh corn — a meaningful affordability advantage.[30] This is the industry's defensive quality.
• Convenience and center-store staples. Tomatoes (sauce, paste, diced) are the demand backbone because they are an everyday cooking ingredient, not a discretionary treat — a reason the tomato segment is more resilient than canned fruit.[15]
• Government purchasing. Federal nutrition programs are a real, steady demand channel: USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) buys canned fruits and vegetables for school-meal and food-bank programs, and canned produce is eligible under SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and WIC (the nutrition program for Women, Infants, and Children).
• Foodservice and private label. Restaurants, institutions, and store-brand contracts absorb a large share of output — especially for cooperatives and co-packers.
• The secular headwind. Working against all of this, health-conscious shoppers are drifting toward fresh, frozen, and "clean-label" foods; canned fruit and vegetable sales have been soft, and 2025 industry commentary framed shelf-stable cans as losing favor to perceived-fresher options.[14] USDA estimates total U.S. vegetable and pulse availability fell to 376 pounds per person in 2024, its lowest level in more than 35 years, with movement away from potatoes and processing vegetables driving much of the long-run decline.[31] USDA also documents a pronounced shift in pineapple availability from canned and juice forms toward fresh fruit.[32] Demand is durable, not growing.

The better secular opportunities are likely to be value-added rather than commodity volume: low-sodium and no-salt products, fruit in juice rather than syrup, organic lines, ethnic and regional vegetables, premium tomato sauces, portable cups and pouches, and foodservice labor-saving formats.

7. Regulation

• Food-safety canning rules (the core mandatory regime). Because improperly canned low-acid food can grow the bacterium that causes botulism, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) regulates it tightly. Under 21 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) Parts 108, 113, and 114, commercial processors of low-acid canned foods (LACF) and acidified foods must register each plant with the FDA and file a validated "scheduled process" for every product, container size, and method. Plant operators must be trained (the "Better Process Control School").[13][33] Deviations may require reprocessing, process-authority evaluation, or destruction.[34] Facilities are also generally subject to FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) hazard analysis, preventive controls, supplier verification, and current good manufacturing practice requirements.[35]
• Sodium. The FDA has issued voluntary short-term and draft longer-term sodium-reduction targets for packaged foods; canned vegetables and sauces are squarely in scope, pushing reformulation toward lower-salt and "no salt added" lines.
• Packaging chemistry. Can liners have historically used BPA (bisphenol A); consumer pressure and state-level restrictions on BPA and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, so-called "forever chemicals") are driving a shift to BPA-free liners and reformulated packaging.
• Labeling and standards of identity (USDA/FDA grading, "fruit cocktail" and similar product standards) govern how products are described and graded.

Regulation here is mostly about safety and labeling, not price or entry — but it raises fixed compliance costs, which modestly favors larger operators.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

Here is the industry's central paradox. At the shelf, a handful of brands dominate and the business looks concentrated. At the factory level, it is not: the four largest firms account for only about 19.8% of shipments, the top 20 for about 55%, and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, the standard concentration gauge) sits around 206 — well within the range regulators consider unconcentrated.[2] The reason: brand names are concentrated, but the actual canning is spread across many regional plants, cooperatives, and private-label co-packers who fill cans for whichever brand or retailer is buying.

Consolidation is nonetheless the theme, and it accelerated in 2025–26:

• B&G Foods sold its Green Giant U.S. shelf-stable (canned) vegetable line to Seneca Foods for $55.2 million in 2023, and licensed the Green Giant name to Seneca — concentrating canned-vegetable capacity in the pure play.[9]
• Del Monte Foods' bankruptcy breakup (2025–26) split a national brand across three buyers: Del Monte Corporation (formerly Fresh Del Monte Produce; the Del Monte brand plus canned vegetable, tomato, and refrigerated-fruit assets, ~$285 million), B&G Foods (the College Inn/Kitchen Basics broth business, ~$110 million), and Pacific Coast Producers (the Del Monte and S&W shelf-stable fruit business) — roughly $509 million in total.[7][19][23][25] Note that Del Monte-branded canned vegetables and tomatoes now sit with public DMC, while much of the branded shelf-stable fruit is produced under license by a private cooperative.

Competition is on cost, scale, grower relationships, and private-label contracts far more than on brand marketing. That favors low-cost operators (cooperatives, efficient private processors like Morning Star) and punishes anyone carrying too much debt.

9. Risks

• Tinplate-steel tariffs — the defining near-term risk. The U.S. imports roughly 80% of the tinplate steel used for food cans, and Section 232 tariffs were raised to 50% in June 2025. Analysts estimate steel-can costs could rise 9–15% (total can-maker costs up to ~12%), and consumer prices for canned fruits and vegetables rose about 5% in the year to September 2025 — nearly double food inflation generally. Nine of twelve U.S. tinplate lines have idled since 2018, leaving canners dependent on imports.[10] This directly compressed Del Monte and is a live margin threat industry-wide.
• Crop and weather volatility — a bad growing season cuts volume and raises unit costs simultaneously (see Section 5).[8]
• Food safety — a process deviation, failed seal, contamination, undeclared allergen, or labeling error can trigger destruction, recall, liability, and lasting loss of retailer approval. This is the highest-consequence operating risk.[34]
• Secular demand softness as shoppers favor fresh, frozen, and clean-label products.[14][31]
• Private-label margin pressure — store brands keep taking share from branded cans, and retailers can be both customers and competitors.
• Leverage — thin, cyclical margins make debt lethal, as Del Monte demonstrated.[5][6]
• Labour risk — the brief pack season concentrates need for seasonal production workers, mechanics, quality personnel, retort specialists, and truck drivers exactly when crops mature. BLS reported a 3.2 total-recordable injury and illness rate per 100 full-time workers for NAICS 311421 in 2024.[36]
• Input and labor inflation beyond steel — produce, energy, and processing labor.
• Regulatory reformulation cost — sodium targets and BPA/PFAS restrictions force recipe and packaging changes.[13]
• Water and climate — California, the raw-material heartland for tomatoes, faces recurring drought and water-allocation risk.[11]

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes.

• Seneca Foods (SENEA / SENEB) is the only near-pure canning stock. Understand what you're buying: a small-cap, family-controlled processor with no dividend, LIFO (last-in, first-out) inventory accounting, thin single-digit margins, and earnings that swing with the crop — a deep-value, commodity-processor profile, not a growth staple. Its two share classes differ mainly in voting rights and are both thinly traded. In fiscal 2026, sales rose to $1.66 billion and gross margin recovered to 13.9%.[8][22]
• Del Monte Corporation (DMC) offers newly enlarged exposure to Del Monte and Contadina packaged vegetables and tomatoes following its March 2026 acquisition of Del Monte Foods' canned business, but it retains substantial fresh-produce and international operations — not a pure-play canner.[17][23][24]
• Diversified exposure comes through Conagra (CAG), Kraft Heinz (KHC), B&G Foods (BGS), and Dole (DOLE) — but in each, canning is a fraction of the business, so you're really buying a broader packaged-food or fresh-produce company.[15][16][18]
• There is no canning-specific ETF (exchange-traded fund); broad consumer-staples or packaged-food funds give only faint, indirect exposure.

Private-market routes.

• Grower cooperatives (e.g., Pacific Coast Producers) — effectively "joined" by farming member acreage, not bought as shares.
• Private and family-owned processors (e.g., Morning Star, Lakeside Foods, Red Gold, McCall Farms) — occasionally change hands via private M&A (mergers and acquisitions) or private equity, but the largest are closely held and not for sale.[12][26][27][28]
• Adjacent plays — farmland tied to tomato/vegetable acreage, co-packing and private-label businesses, and the pick-and-shovel suppliers (can and equipment makers) whose fortunes track the same cycle.

The central diligence issue in a private transaction is not a generic packaged-food multiple. It is crop-by-crop capacity utilization, grower-contract quality, water access, customer concentration, private-label renewal risk, age and flexibility of retorts and filling lines, food-safety history, environmental liabilities, normalized pack cost, and peak seasonal borrowing.

Outlook (forward-looking judgment, not reported fact). The base case is a mature, low-growth industry where volume in some canned categories keeps eroding while tomatoes and value-priced staples prove resilient. The single biggest swing factor over the next year or two is tariff-driven tinplate inflation: if 50% steel tariffs persist, can costs stay elevated and margins stay pressured; any rollback would be a direct tailwind.[10] Consolidation should continue as the Del Monte estate is absorbed and weaker balance sheets are tested. The industry's defensive, value-oriented demand offers downside protection in a consumer slowdown, but not much upside — this is a sector for investors who want steady staples exposure and cheap, cyclical processing assets, not growth. Companies that win will be the low-cost, low-debt operators with strong grower relationships and private-label scale.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (CBP), 2023 (NAICS 311421: establishments, employment, annual payroll). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration and Comparative Statistics (NAICS 311421: receipts, firm count, production workers, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Definition — 311421. https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=311421&year=2022
4. IBISWorld, Canned Fruit & Vegetable Processing in the US — Market Size, 2025. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-size/canned-fruit-vegetable-processing/239/
5. CNN Business, "Del Monte Foods: 138-year-old grocery store staple files for bankruptcy," 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/02/food/del-monte-foods-bankruptcy
6. Axios, "Del Monte Foods files for bankruptcy and is pursuing a sale," 2025. https://www.axios.com/2025/07/02/del-monte-foods-bankruptcy
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8. Seneca Foods Corporation, Form 10-K, Fiscal Year 2025, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/88948/000143774925020197/senea20250331_10k.htm
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11. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), "2025 California Processing Tomato Report," 2025. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Publications/Specialty_and_Other_Releases/Tomatoes/
12. Wikipedia, "The Morning Star Company," 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Morning_Star_Company
13. U.S. Food and Drug Administration / eCFR, 21 CFR Part 113 — Thermally Processed Low-Acid Foods Packaged in Hermetically Sealed Containers (and Parts 108, 114), 2025. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-113
14. FoodNavigator, "Cans to be canned? Consumers turn away from shelf-stable food," 2025. https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2025/07/25/canned-food-declining-in-popularity-in-favour-of-natural-food/
15. Conagra Brands, "Conagra Brands Reports Fourth Quarter [Fiscal 2025] Results," 2025. https://www.conagrabrands.com/news-room/news-conagra-brands-reports-fourth-quarter-results-prn-122930
16. B&G Foods, Inc., Form 8-K (fiscal 2024 results), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1278027/000155837024007335/bgs-20240508xex99d1.htm
17. Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., "Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2025 Financial Results," 2026. https://investorrelations.freshdelmonte.com/news/news-details/2026/Fresh-Del-Monte-Produce-Inc--Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Fiscal-Year-2025-Financial-Results/default.aspx
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31. USDA Economic Research Service, "U.S. vegetable and pulse availability falls to 35-year low," 2025. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/112836
32. USDA Economic Research Service, "Pineapple availability shifts from canned to fresh," 2025. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/113353
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35. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FSMA Final Rule for Preventive Controls for Human Food. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/fsma-final-rule-preventive-controls-human-food
36. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, Table 1, 2024. https://www.bls.gov/iif/nonfatal-injuries-and-illnesses-tables/table-1-injury-and-illness-rates-by-industry-2024-national.htm