Textile and Fabric Finishing Mills (U.S., NAICS 31331)

Short primer — single-child pass-through. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 31331 is a five-digit industry that contains exactly one six-digit national industry, 313310 Textile and Fabric Finishing Mills. At this level the two codes describe the same businesses with the same numbers, so this page is deliberately brief: it states the level's own federal figures and points you to the full 313310 primer for the detail on business models, companies, regulation, and how to invest.

1. Overview

Textile and fabric finishing mills are the "value-add" step between raw cloth and a usable product. They take undyed, unbleached "greige" (loom-state) fabric and turn it into finished goods by dyeing, bleaching, printing, and mechanically or chemically treating it — mercerizing, preshrinking, calendering, napping, stonewashing, and applying performance treatments such as water, stain, wrinkle, and flame resistance.[4] It is a capital-intensive, energy- and water-hungry manufacturing industry that has been squeezed for decades by imports, and one of the most environmentally regulated corners of U.S. manufacturing.

Because code 31331 rolls up a single child, everything true of 313310 is true here — there is no additional activity that appears only at the five-digit level. Read this page for the top-line size of the industry; read 313310 for the full analysis.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

The NAICS hierarchy narrows from broad to specific: subsector 313 Textile Mills → industry group 3133 Textile and Fabric Finishing and Fabric Coating Mills → industry 31331 Textile and Fabric Finishing Mills → national industry 313310. The five-digit industry 31331 has only one six-digit member, 313310, so the two are one-to-one. Aggregating 313310 up to 31331 changes nothing — no other national industry is added into the total.

Note the deliberately narrow scope. Fabric coating (applying polyurethane, PVC, or rubber to cloth) is a separate industry — 313320 Fabric Coating Mills — and sits alongside 31331 under group 3133, not inside it.[4] Spinning (313110), weaving (313210), and knitting (313240) are separate industries again. So 31331 is finishing only: bleaching, dyeing, printing, and mechanical/chemical treatment of fabric the mill does not necessarily own.

3. How big it is

Federal figures for this level (NAICS 31331), from our ground-truth statistics:

These are identical to the 313310 figures because it is the only child. For scale, revenue works out to roughly $270,000 per worker and about $7.8 million per firm[1][2] — modest for manufacturing, reflecting the labor- and service-heavy, toll-processing nature of the work. The industry has shrunk: 2017 receipts were about $4.9 billion, so nominal revenue fell roughly a fifth in five years even before adjusting for inflation.[5]

The contraction continues. BLS data for the four-digit group 3133 (which includes both 313310 finishers and 313320 fabric coaters) shows employment falling from an estimated 26,400 in 2024 to 21,800 in 2025, with group output down 4.0% and hours worked down 17.3% — evidence of ongoing capacity rationalization.[6][7]

Undercount caveat. Census coverage of stand-alone finishers is good — these are real payroll businesses — but 31331 understates how much fabric finishing actually happens in the U.S. Finishing done captively inside a vertically integrated mill is counted under that mill's primary product (a weaver that also dyes counts under 313210; a knitter under 313240; a coater under 313320). So 31331 measures the merchant / commission-finishing market, not total national finishing capacity. Private market-research estimates that lump in coating or integrated activity run higher (roughly $6–7 billion), which is a scope difference, not a contradiction.[4] Ownership is overwhelmingly private, so any given operator's size is often invisible in public filings.

4. Investable universe

Because the level equals its one child, value concentrates exactly where 313310 says it does. There is no U.S.-listed pure-play textile-finishing company. The closest public exposure is small-cap home-textiles maker Culp, Inc. (NASDAQ: CULP), whose integrated weaving, dyeing, and finishing economics track this industry most closely.[14] Unifi, Inc. (NYSE: UFI) offers an adjacent recycled-fiber angle upstream of finishing,[15] and Kornit Digital (NASDAQ: KRNT) is a "picks-and-shovels" supplier of the digital textile-printing hardware finishers are adopting.[18]

The bulk of the industry is privately held: materials-science and performance-fabric companies such as Milliken & Company (22 vertically integrated textile plants in the Southeast U.S., portfolio now PFAS-free) and Glen Raven (Sunbrella), the private-equity-backed Elevate Textiles platform (Burlington, Cone Denim), Mount Vernon Mills (weaving, dyeing, and surface finishing for workwear and denim), and a long tail of roughly 450 small commission dyehouses.[16][17][19] Dye and finishing-chemical suppliers — DuPont (NYSE: DD), Dow (NYSE: DOW), and Chemours (NYSE: CC, the PFAS story) — give indirect public exposure. There is no textile-finishing ETF (exchange-traded fund). See 313310 §4 for the full company table.

5. How the money works

Finishing is a manufacturing-margin business. Two models dominate: commission (toll) finishers charge a fee per yard/pound to process fabric the customer owns — inventory-light but thin-margin; converters buy greige cloth, finish it, and resell it — fatter margin but exposed to fabric-price and fashion-inventory risk. In both, profit turns on capacity utilization (keeping expensive dyeing and printing lines running full), on buying dyes, chemicals, energy, and water well, and on holding yield high (off-shade lots become "seconds"). Full detail is in 313310 §5.

6. What drives demand

Demand comes from three end markets: apparel and fashion; home textiles (mattresses, upholstery, bedding, towels); and technical/industrial textiles (automotive, medical, protective, filtration). The technical segment is the growth end — the U.S. technical-textiles market is projected to grow roughly 3.9% a year to 2030[20] — while commodity apparel finishing keeps eroding. Housing and consumer cycles drive home textiles; fast fashion and made-to-order favor water-saving digital textile printing (which can cut water use up to ~95%);[18] and the Berry Amendment (a U.S. Department of Defense domestic-sourcing rule for textiles) anchors a protected slice of demand.[10] For context, USDA estimated U.S. cotton textile and apparel imports at approximately 8.5 billion raw-fiber-equivalent pounds in 2025, while domestic cotton-mill use was only about 0.8 billion pounds — illustrating where most consumer textile volume is now processed.[21]

7. Regulation

Finishing is water- and chemical-intensive, so environmental rules are central. Dye effluent is governed by the EPA's (Environmental Protection Agency) Textile Mills Effluent Guidelines (40 CFR Part 410) under Clean Water Act discharge permits.[8] PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, "forever chemicals") used in stain/water-resistant finishes are a live issue: EPA is moving to set wastewater limits,[9] and has noted that sites may continue discharging PFAS even after ceasing use of the chemistry — meaning "PFAS-free product" does not equal "PFAS-free site."[8] California and New York banned PFAS in most apparel and textiles effective January 1, 2025, with thresholds tightening in 2027.[11] Flammability standards — notably the 16 CFR Part 1633 mattress open-flame rule[12] — drive flame-retardant finishing. See 313310 §7.

8. Consolidation

The industry is fragmented with a concentrated top tier. The four largest firms hold about 30% of receipts, the top eight about 42%, and the top 50 roughly 79% — yet the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard concentration measure) is a low 386, well under the 1,500 "unconcentrated" line.[2] The structural story is decades of consolidation and plant closure as weaving and apparel offshored and finishing followed the fabric; survivors specialized or were rolled up (for example, Elevate Textiles assembling Burlington and Cone Denim under private-equity ownership).[2]

9. Risks

The core risks are the child's risks: import competition and trade-policy whiplash (the secular threat — 2025 U.S. textile output still fell about 4% despite new tariffs, as imports shifted country rather than reshoring);[13][14] cyclical end-demand in housing, furniture, apparel, and auto; input and energy cost volatility; environmental compliance and PFAS liability (including legacy discharge risk at sites that have ceased using the chemistry);[8][9][11] customer concentration; and aging, capital-intensive equipment. Full list in 313310 §9.

10. How to invest and the outlook

For public-market investors, exposure is limited and indirect — Culp (CULP) as the closest listed operator, Unifi (UFI) upstream, Kornit (KRNT) as an equipment supplier, and diversified chemical names (DD, DOW, CC) for finishing-chemical and PFAS exposure — all cyclical, idiosyncratic bets rather than a clean sector play.[14][15][18] For private investors, this is where the industry actually lives: direct ownership of commission dyehouses and integrated finishers (many family-owned and succession-driven) and private-equity roll-ups of specialty platforms, underwritten on plant utilization, customer diversification, PFAS-compliance status, and equipment age.

Outlook: commodity finishing will likely keep shrinking under import pressure, while durable value migrates to specialization (technical, defense/Berry-compliant, medical, performance) and to quick-turn domestic and digital printing plus compliance-driven, low-water reformulation.[18] A mature, low-growth industry where disciplined, specialized, compliant operators can still earn attractive returns, but broad passive exposure is neither available nor advisable. For the complete analysis, see the 313310 primer.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. "County Business Patterns 2023 — NAICS 313310." 2023. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 Economic Census — Concentration Ratios / Selected Statistics, NAICS 313310." 2022. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
3. U.S. Small Business Administration. "Table of Size Standards (NAICS 313310 — 1,000 employees)." 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. IBISWorld / U.S. Census Bureau. "NAICS Code 313310 — Textile and Fabric Finishing Mills (definition and scope)." 2024. https://www.ibisworld.com/classifications/naics/313310/textile-and-fabric-finishing-mills/
5. SICCODE. "NAICS Code 313310 — Textile and Fabric Finishing Mills (2017 revenue)." 2024. https://siccode.com/naics-code/313310/textile-fabric-finishing-mills
6. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Detailed Industry Productivity — 2024 Release." April 2025. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/prin_04242025.htm
7. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Detailed Industry Productivity — 2025 Release." 2025. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/prin.htm
8. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Textile Mills Effluent Guidelines (40 CFR Part 410)." 2024. https://www.epa.gov/eg/textile-mills-effluent-guidelines
9. Williams Mullen. "EPA to Issue Information Collection Requests to Set PFAS Limitations for Textile Wastewaters." 2024. https://www.williamsmullen.com/insights/news/legal-news/epa-issue-information-collection-requests-set-pfas-limitations-textile
10. U.S. Department of Commerce / International Trade Administration. "The Berry Amendment." https://www.trade.gov/berry-amendment
11. Morgan Lewis. "New York and California: Bans on PFAS in Textiles and Apparel Begin January 1, 2025." 2024. https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2024/11/new-york-and-california-bans-on-pfas-in-textiles-and-apparel-begin-january-1-2025
12. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission / eCFR. "16 CFR Part 1633 — Standard for the Flammability (Open Flame) of Mattress Sets." https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-II/subchapter-D/part-1633
13. Sourcing Journal / WWD. "It Will Take More Than Tariffs to Bring Back U.S. Textile Manufacturing, Industry Insiders Say." 2025. https://wwd.com/sourcing-journal/industry-news/us-textile-manufacturing-tariffs-trade-ncto-cotswold-industries-mount-vernon-mills-1238937985/
14. Culp, Inc. "Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2025 Results." Business Wire, 2025. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250625123994/en/Culp-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-Fiscal-2025-Results
15. UNIFI, Inc. "Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2025 Results." 2025. https://investor.unifi.com/news-releases/news-release-details/unifir-makers-reprever-announces-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-2025
16. Wikipedia. "Milliken & Company." 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milliken_%26_Company
17. Owler / Wikipedia. "Glen Raven, Inc. — company profile (revenue estimate)." 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Raven,_Inc
18. Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence / Kornit Digital. "Digital Textile Printing Market and Waterless Printing." 2025. https://www.knowledge-sourcing.com/report/digital-textile-printing-market
19. Mount Vernon Mills. "Company Overview." 2024. https://www.mvmills.com/
20. Grand View Research / SelectUSA. "U.S. Technical Textiles Market Size & Outlook, 2024–2030." 2024. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/horizon/outlook/technical-textiles-market/united-states
21. USDA Economic Research Service. "Cotton and Wool Outlook — March 2026." 2026. https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/outlooks/113948/CWS-26c.pdf