Plastics Bag and Pouch Manufacturing (U.S.) — NAICS 326111

1. Overview

This is the business of turning plastic resin and film into finished bags and pouches — the trash-can liners under your sink, the zipper sandwich bags in the pantry, grocery carryout bags, produce and bread bags, industrial can liners, e-commerce mailers, the vacuum-sealed pouch around supermarket meat, and the stand-up snack and pet-food pouches on retail shelves. It is a high-volume, low-margin, capital-intensive corner of manufacturing that sits inside the much larger flexible packaging sector.

An investor should care for two reasons. First, demand is defensive and consumable — bags get used once and thrown away, so orders repeat regardless of the economy, especially in food and waste. Second, the industry is in the middle of a fast consolidation wave and a regulatory squeeze (bag bans, recycling mandates), which together are reshaping who makes money and how.

There is no clean, U.S.-listed "plastic bag" pure-play. Public-market investors reach the industry through diversified packaging giants and consumer-staples companies that own bag brands. Private investors — including private equity and private credit — actually own most of the industry: the largest domestic bag makers are privately held or PE-controlled. Both routes are covered below.

2. What it is and how it's structured

In scope (NAICS 326111): establishments primarily engaged in (1) converting plastic resin directly into bags or pouches, and (2) forming, coating, or laminating plastic film or sheet into single- or multi-layer bags and pouches.[1] Typical products: retail/shopping bags, trash and can liners, food-storage and freezer bags, produce and deli bags, industrial liners, medical and specimen bags, and laminated stand-up pouches.

What it excludes — this is where the code gets narrow:

• NAICS 326112 — Plastics Packaging Film and Sheet (including Laminated): makes the film and sheet that others turn into bags; if a plant's primary output is roll film, it lands here, not in 326111.[2]
• NAICS 326113 — plastic film and unlaminated sheet for non-packaging uses.[2]
• NAICS 322220 — Paper Bag and Coated & Treated Paper: paper grocery and lunch bags (the substitute product for banned plastic bags) are counted here, not in 326111.[2]
• NAICS 326130 — laminated plastics plate, sheet, and shapes (non-packaging).[2]

Operating model. An integrated producer buys polyethylene or other resin pellets, melts and extrudes them into blown or cast film, winds the film, then prints, coats or laminates it before slitting, folding, gusseting, heat-sealing and cutting it. A converter can instead buy film and perform only the downstream operations. Higher-specification pouches add barrier layers, adhesives, zippers, valves, spouts or child-resistant closures. Plants are capital-intensive but operationally demanding: profitability depends on extrusion and press utilization, long production runs, low scrap, rapid changeovers, accurate color registration, seal integrity and avoiding unplanned downtime.

Ownership mix. Three tiers coexist. (a) Branded consumer makers — Reynolds (Hefty), Clorox (Glad), S.C. Johnson (Ziploc) — sell through grocery and mass retail with real brand pricing power. (b) Large diversified converters — Amcor, Novolex, ProAmpac, Sealed Air — make bags and pouches as part of a broad packaging portfolio, often for food and industrial customers. (c) A long tail of regional commodity converters making can liners, retail bags, and industrial film. The federal data below counts 276 firms, but ownership is dominated at the top by a handful of large private and PE-backed groups.

3. How big it is

Federal statistics (our ground-truth figures):

The HHI of 473 (a concentration measure where anything below 1,500 is "unconcentrated") and a top-four share of just 35% confirm a fragmented industry on paper.[3]

Undercount caveat. This code understates the true U.S. bag-and-pouch economy for three reasons — though not because of the usual "tiny/informal operators" problem (this is a real-plant, wage-paying industry the federal data captures well). Rather: (1) the line with NAICS 326112 (film and sheet) is porous — many plants extrude film and make bags, and a plant is booked to a single primary code, so bag output made inside a "film" plant disappears from 326111; (2) the biggest branded volumes (Glad, Ziploc) sit inside consumer-staples conglomerates whose corporate primary code is not 326111; and (3) the figure counts domestic production only — Americans also consume roughly $3 billion of imported bags and pouches each year (mostly low-cost retail carryout bags from Asia), against about $1 billion of exports, so the U.S. is a net importer and true domestic consumption exceeds domestic production.[6]

4. The investable universe

There is no U.S.-listed company that only makes plastic bags. Public exposure comes bundled inside larger firms; the deepest ownership sits in private hands.

Public companies (bag/pouch exposure inside a bigger portfolio):

Major private / PE-owned makers (where most of the industry lives):

Pactiv Evergreen (formerly ticker PTVE) was taken private in the Novolex deal, shrinking the public universe further.[11]

5. How the money works

Owners make money on a simple but volatile spread: the price they charge for a finished bag minus the cost of the resin that goes into it.

• Resin is the swing cost. The main input is polyethylene (LDPE, LLDPE, HDPE), a petrochemical whose price tracks oil and natural-gas liquids. Resin often runs 50–70% of the cost of a commodity bag, so the whole business rises and falls on the resin cycle.[15] A broader FPA converter survey found that purchased film represented 47% of material spending and resin another 23% in 2022.[16]
• Pass-through is the key skill. Converters protect margins with index-linked contracts that reset selling prices as resin moves (monthly or quarterly), plus hedging and multi-sourcing. When resin spikes faster than contracts reset, margins get squeezed, and vice-versa.[15] This dynamic can make reported revenue misleading: Berry's fiscal-2024 filing attributed $375 million of its sales decline to passing through lower resin costs, while its actual volume decline was only 1%.[17] Amcor disclosed that a hypothetical 1% increase in its principal raw-material prices, if not passed through, would reduce fiscal-2025 pretax income by approximately $97 million.[8]
• Metrics that matter: capacity utilization (extrusion and bag-making lines run around the clock, so absorbing fixed cost is everything), the conversion margin / resin spread (cents per pound of price over resin), pounds shipped, scrap and yield rates, and product mix. Thin can-liners and plain retail bags are near-commodity, low-margin work; printed, laminated, recycled-content, medical, and branded pouches carry meaningfully higher margins.
• Freight and geography. Bags are bulky and light — low value per truckload — so it rarely pays to ship them far. Makers run regional plant networks near customers, and scale in resin buying power is a durable edge.
• Customer concentration. Big-box retail and large foodservice buyers hold pricing leverage over suppliers. Reynolds disclosed that its largest customer and affiliates represented 48% of 2025 revenue, concentrated particularly in Hefty Waste & Storage and tableware — illustrating the bargaining power of mass merchants and warehouse clubs.[18]
• Branded vs. commodity. Reynolds, Clorox, and S.C. Johnson earn retail-brand economics (shelf position, marketing, premium lines); commodity converters compete mainly on cost, scale, and resin procurement. Reynolds' Hefty Waste & Storage segment reported a 28% adjusted EBITDA margin in 2025 — an upper-end consumer-products result, not a commodity-converter benchmark.[18] Amcor's global flexible-packaging segment reported a 13.4% adjusted EBIT margin in fiscal 2025, reflecting its broader product mix.[8]

Bottom line: this is cyclical commodity manufacturing at the low end, with better and steadier returns for the players who move up-mix into specialty, printed, and recycled-content pouches.

6. What drives demand

• Food and beverage packaging — the largest and most defensive pull: storage bags, produce and bread bags, frozen and snack pouches, meat/cheese vacuum bags. FPA estimated retail food at $19.0 billion, or 44% of U.S. flexible-packaging sales in 2022 (a flexible-packaging statistic, not a 326111 statistic, but indicative of food's dominance).[16] Grows with population and consumption.
• Waste management — household and institutional can liners; steady, non-discretionary.
• Retail and foodservice carryout bags — historically large, now shrinking in ban states (see Regulation), partly shifting to thicker "reusable" plastic bags or paper.
• E-commerce — a growth pocket for poly mailers and protective bags.
• Healthcare / medical pouches — sterile-barrier pouches; higher growth and margin.
• Industrial and agricultural film and bags — tied to the goods economy.
• Resin/oil prices set pricing, but volumes are driven by consumption; the two can move independently.
• Sustainability demand — retailers and brand owners increasingly specify recycled content, recyclable mono-material designs, and compostable options, pulling demand toward higher-spec products. The dominant design trend is toward downgauging, mono-material polyethylene structures, post-consumer recycled content and improved barrier performance using less material.

Demand is moderately defensive rather than noncyclical. Trash bags, food storage, food packaging and healthcare applications recur through economic downturns. Industrial liners, retail sacks and e-commerce mailers are more exposed to production, store traffic and shipment volumes. Amcor describes moderate seasonality, with food and beverage packaging demand typically strengthening toward the end of its fiscal year.[8]

7. Regulation

Regulation is the single biggest structural force on this industry, and it cuts against thin single-use plastic while pushing toward recycled and premium formats.

• Plastic bag bans. Twelve states ban single-use plastic carryout bags — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington — and roughly one-third of Americans now live under some bag policy.[19] Design matters: some bans exempt thicker "reusable" plastic bags, which shifted volume rather than eliminating it. Washington adds a 12-cent fee on film carryout bags starting January 2026.[20]
• Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Seven states — Maine, Oregon, Colorado, California, Maryland, Minnesota, Washington — have passed EPR laws that make producers pay for the end-of-life of their packaging via fees, with lower fees for recyclable/recycled designs ("eco-modulation").[21] California's SB 54 is the most sweeping: permanent regulations took effect May 1, 2026, requiring by 2032 a 25% reduction in single-use plastic, 100% recyclable or compostable packaging, and an actual recycling rate of 65% for covered single-use plastic packaging and food-service ware.[22] Oregon began collecting EPR fees July 1, 2025. The Circular Action Alliance is the designated producer-responsibility organization in five states.[21] These fees are a new, ongoing cost on plastic packaging.
• PFAS and recycled-content rules. Several states restrict PFAS ("forever chemicals") in food-contact packaging and set minimum post-consumer recycled (PCR) content; makers are reformulating (e.g., PFAS-free slider bags).[9]
• Federal. FDA food-contact rules govern food bags; in June 2025 the Interior Department ordered a phase-out of single-use plastics on federally managed lands by 2032.[23] Imported retail bags have periodically faced antidumping duties.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

On paper the industry is fragmented (276 firms, HHI 473, top-four share ~35%),[3] but the top of the market is consolidating fast, largely driven by private equity:

• Amcor + Berry Global combined in an all-stock merger completed April 30, 2025, creating a global packaging leader. The combined flexible-packaging segment had 210 manufacturing and support facilities in 36 countries at fiscal year-end 2025.[7][8]
• Apollo-backed Novolex + Pactiv Evergreen, a $6.7 billion deal completed April 1, 2025, fused two large bag and food-packaging players and took Pactiv private. Apollo-affiliated funds retain majority ownership, with CPP Investments and management holding minority stakes.[11][12]
• ProAmpac + TC Transcontinental Packaging, completed March 6, 2026, created a combined company with 80+ manufacturing sites and 11,000 employees (including paper packaging, rollstock and non-U.S. operations).[13]
• Private capital owns much of the rest — Inteplast, Poly-America, Sigma Plastics, Printpack — funded in part with heavy leverage (Novolex arranged a ~$3B term loan and ~$1.6B bridge for its deal).[24]

The competitive logic: scale wins in resin procurement, capital spending, national distribution, and now in absorbing EPR/recycling compliance cost. Branded consumer makers defend margins with shelf position and premium lines; commodity converters live or die on cost and resin buying power. Expect further roll-ups of regional converters.

9. Risks

• Regulation and substitution (structural). Bans, EPR fees, PCR mandates, and PFAS rules are a lasting headwind for single-use plastic, and paper/compostable/reusable substitutes take share. The flip side: these same rules create premium demand for recycled and recyclable designs.
• Resin-price volatility and margin squeeze. When polyethylene spikes faster than contracts reset, conversion margins compress. Analysts flag a risk of polyethylene oversupply and margin pressure through 2028–2030 as new capacity outpaces demand.[15]
• Recycled-content supply risk. Mandated recycled content can be problematic where food-contact-quality recycled resin is scarce. Amcor warns that PCR mandates may produce shortages and higher prices because recycling rates may be insufficient to meet demand.[8]
• Commoditization and imports. The low end is near-commodity, and ~$3B of imported bags pressure domestic pricing.[6]
• Leverage. PE-owned makers carry substantial debt; a downturn or rate shock raises refinancing and default risk.[24]
• Customer concentration. Big-box retail and large foodservice buyers hold pricing leverage over suppliers.
• ESG / reputational. Plastic pollution keeps the sector in the political and consumer crosshairs.
• Cyclicality. Industrial and carryout volumes track the goods economy and oil cycle.
• Recycling gap. "Recycle-ready" should not be confused with actually recycled. Even mono-material pouches are generally not accepted in ordinary curbside programs, while store drop-off and depot collection remain limited alternatives.[25][26]

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public-market routes. The cleanest large-cap way in is Amcor (AMCR), now the scaled global flexible-packaging leader after absorbing Berry; its flexible segment represented approximately 72% of fiscal-2025 consolidated sales, but those operations are global and include films, healthcare packaging, and other products outside 326111.[8] Reynolds (REYN) is the most bag-centric branded play (Hefty/Reynolds), useful for its defensive consumer cash flows and dividend. Clorox (CLX) offers only thin exposure through Glad inside a diversified staples company; Sealed Air (SEE) adds Cryovac food-bag exposure; Sonoco (SON) is stepping out of flexibles. There is no dedicated "plastic bag" exchange-traded fund; broad packaging, materials, or consumer-staples funds give diluted, indirect exposure. Because most names are diversified, investors are really buying a packaging or staples business with bag exposure attached — position sizing and valuation (earnings multiples, dividend yield) should reflect that.

Private-market routes. This is where the industry mostly lives. Direct ownership runs through private equity (Apollo's Novolex, Pritzker's ProAmpac) and family-held firms (Poly-America, S.C. Johnson, Inteplast, Printpack). Fixed-income investors can access the same issuers through their leveraged loans and high-yield bonds, which are actively traded and offer yield tied to the sector's cash flows and leverage.[24] Others participate as suppliers (resin, machinery) or customers negotiating supply. Public Apollo shares provide exposure to management fees and carried interest associated with Apollo funds, not direct proportional ownership of Novolex's operating earnings.

Near-term drivers and outlook (forward-looking judgment). Expect low-single-digit volume growth overall, led by food, e-commerce, and medical pouches, while single-use retail carryout bags keep eroding under bans and EPR. Margins will continue to hinge on the resin cycle, with a real risk of polyethylene oversupply compressing commodity margins later this decade. Consolidation should continue, favoring scaled players who can spread compliance and capital costs. The clearest long-run winners are makers that shift mix toward printed, laminated, recycled-content, and recyclable mono-material pouches — where regulation is pushing demand and margins are best — while the plain, thin, single-use end of the market slowly shrinks.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau / NAICS Association, "NAICS Code 326111 — Plastics Bag and Pouch Manufacturing (definition)," 2022. https://www.naics.com/naics-code-description/?code=326111
2. SICCODE / NAICS Association, "NAICS Code 326112 — Plastics Packaging Film and Sheet (including Laminated) Manufacturing; scope and exclusions," 2022. https://siccode.com/naics-code/326112/plastics-packaging-film-sheet-laminated-manufacturing
3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration and receipts for NAICS 326111 (receipts $16.37B; 276 firms; CR4 34.9%, CR8 51.4%, CR50 85.6%; HHI 473.1), 2022. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
4. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023 — NAICS 326111 (376 establishments; 40,114 employees; annual payroll $2.60B), 2023. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
5. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Small Business Size Standards" — NAICS 326111 = 750 employees, 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
6. Kentley Insights / IBISWorld, "Plastic Bag & Pouch Manufacturing (NAICS 326111) Market Report — industry revenue, imports ~$3.0B, exports ~$1.1B," 2025. https://www.kentleyinsights.com/plastic-bag-pouch-manufacturing-market-report/
7. Amcor plc, "Amcor closes Berry Global merger" (completed April 30, 2025), PR Newswire / Amcor, 2025. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/amcor-closes-berry-global-merger-reports-third-quarter-result-and-updates-fiscal-2025-outlook-302443284.html
8. Amcor plc, 2025 Form 10-K (flexible segment: 210 facilities in 36 countries, ~72% of sales, 13.4% adjusted EBIT margin; 1% raw-material sensitivity = ~$97M pretax impact), SEC, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1748790/000174879025000023/amcr-20250630.htm
9. Reynolds Consumer Products, "Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Financial Results" (net revenues $3,695M; Hefty Waste & Storage; PFAS-free slider bags), Business Wire, 2025. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250205634087/en/Reynolds-Consumer-Products-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2024-Financial-Results-Provides-2025-Outlook
10. The Clorox Company, "Glad Trash Bags — brand overview," 2025. https://www.thecloroxcompany.com/sds/glad-trash-bags/
11. Packaging Dive, "Novolex completes $6.7B acquisition of Pactiv Evergreen," 2025. https://www.packagingdive.com/news/novolex-closes-acquisition-pactiv-evergreen/744049/
12. Novolex, 2024 Sustainability Report (Pactiv acquisition completed April 1, 2025; Apollo-affiliated funds majority, CPP Investments and management minority), 2025. https://novolex.com/content/Report%20History/2024%20Report/Novolex-2024-Sustainability-Report_Final_08062025.pdf
13. ProAmpac, "ProAmpac completes acquisition of TC Transcontinental Packaging" (March 6, 2026; 80+ sites, 11,000 employees), 2026. https://www.proampac.com/en-us/media-center/941/proampac-completes-acquisition-of-tc-transcontinental-packaging/
14. Grand View Research, "Plastic Bags & Sacks Market Size & Share Report" (major makers; Inteplast ~$1.8B revenue), 2025. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/plastic-bags-sacks-market
15. Plastics Technology / PlasticsToday and ICIS, "Resin pricing 2024–2025 and Americas plastics outlook — polyethylene cost, pass-through, and oversupply risk 2028–2030," 2025. https://www.ptonline.com/topics/resin-pricing
16. Flexible Packaging Association / Converting Quarterly, "U.S. flex-pack market grows 4.2% to $44.7 billion" (FPA/Inforum data; purchased film 47% of material spending, resin 23%; retail food $19.0B or 44% of flexible-packaging sales), 2023. https://convertingquarterly.com/us-flex-pack-market-grows-4-2-to-44-7-billion-last-year-fpa/
17. Berry Global, 2024 Form 10-K ($375M sales decline from resin pass-through; volume decline only 1%), SEC, 2024. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1378992/000114036124047881/form10k.htm
18. Reynolds Consumer Products, 2025 Form 10-K (largest customer 48% of revenue; Hefty Waste & Storage $1.011B revenue, 28% adjusted EBITDA margin), SEC, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1786431/000162828026005284/reyn-20251231.htm
19. Earth911 / Morgan Chaney, "The State of Plastic Bans in the United States — 12 states with plastic bag bans; ~one-third of Americans under a bag policy," 2025. https://earth911.com/business-policy/the-state-of-plastic-bans-in-the-united-states/
20. Washington State Department of Ecology, "Single-use plastic bag ban — ESHB 1293; 12-cent film bag charge from Jan. 1, 2026," 2025. https://ecology.wa.gov/waste-toxics/reducing-recycling-waste/plastics/plastic-bag-ban
21. Proskauer Rose LLP, "Seven States and Counting: The 2025 Guide to EPR Packaging Compliance" (ME, OR, CO, CA, MD, MN, WA; Circular Action Alliance), 2025. https://www.proskauer.com/alert/the-2025-guide-to-epr-packaging-compliance
22. CalRecycle, "SB 54 permanent regulations take effect May 1, 2026" (25% reduction, 100% recyclable/compostable, 65% recycling rate by 2032), 2026. https://calrecycle.ca.gov/2026/05/01/press-release-26-05/
23. U.S. Department of the Interior, Secretarial Order to phase out single-use plastic products on federally managed lands by 2032, June 2025. https://earth911.com/business-policy/the-state-of-plastic-bans-in-the-united-states/
24. Octus (Reorg), "Apollo-Backed Novolex to Launch $3B Term Loan, $1.6B Bridge Loan for $6.7B Acquisition of Pactiv Evergreen," 2025. https://octus.com/resources/articles/apollo-backed-novolex-to-launch-3b-term-loan/
25. Packaging Dive, "Mono-material pouches generally not accepted in ordinary curbside programs," 2025. https://www.packagingdive.com/news/dan-felton-flexible-packaging-association-new-role/734823/
26. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Frequent Questions on Recycling — bags and wraps often collected through retailers rather than municipal programs," 2025. https://www.epa.gov/recycle/frequent-questions-recycling