All Other Plastics Product Manufacturing (NAICS 326199): An Investor's Primer

1. Overview

NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 326199, "All Other Plastics Product Manufacturing," is the catch-all bucket of America's plastics-converting industry. It covers the plastic parts and products that don't fall into a more specific plastics category — bottle caps and closures, resilient flooring (vinyl tile and sheet), plastic siding and trim, buckets, bins and trash cans, cups and dinnerware, plastic hardware, and the enormous tail of custom injection-molded and blow-molded components that go into cars, appliances, medical devices, electronics, and packaging.[1]

It is a large, mature, and highly fragmented manufacturing base: roughly 5,546 establishments employing about 392,600 people, with industry receipts near $122.7 billion.[2][3] For an investor, three things matter up front. First, this is a conversion business — owners buy plastic resin pellets and sell shaped parts at a markup, so profits hinge on the spread between selling price and resin cost, and on keeping expensive machines running. Second, it is overwhelmingly a private-market industry: thousands of family-owned and private-equity-backed molders, with only a thin slice of public exposure, and even that mostly buried inside diversified companies. Third, there is no pure-play public stock for 326199 — public investors reach it through segments of larger firms in closures, flooring, building products, and containers (Section 4).

2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. The Census Bureau defines 326199 as establishments making plastics products except the ones carved out into their own codes.[1] The exclusions are the key to understanding it — this is a residual category defined by what it is not. Adjacent plastics codes that sit outside 326199 include:

• 326111 — plastics bags and pouches
• 326112 / 326113 — plastics packaging film and sheet / other film and sheet
• 326121 / 326122 — plastics profile shapes / plastics pipe and pipe fittings
• 326130 — laminated plastics plate, sheet, and shapes
• 326140 / 326150 — polystyrene foam / urethane and other foam products
• 326160 — plastics bottles
• 326191 — plastics plumbing fixtures
• 325211 — plastics material and resin (the upstream feedstock supplier, a different industry)

Everything else plastic lands in 326199: closures and dispensing systems, resilient (vinyl) flooring, plastic siding, utility containers, non-foam cups and dinnerware, gloves, hangers, inflatable rafts and air mattresses, fiberglass tanks and ladders, and custom-molded industrial and consumer parts.[1]

Classification caveat. NAICS describes establishments, not consolidated companies. A diversified manufacturer may have plants in 326199 and other plants in packaging, chemicals, or distribution — company-level revenue therefore cannot safely be treated as 326199 revenue without plant-level evidence. There is also a time-series break: the 2022 NAICS definition includes resilient floor coverings, while prior classifications treated resilient flooring separately. Comparisons across pre- and post-2022 datasets are therefore not clean growth rates.[1][18]

Process. Producers convert resin pellets into finished parts by injection molding (the dominant method), blow molding, extrusion, compression molding, rotational molding, resin-transfer molding, and thermoforming. Parts may subsequently be trimmed, machined, painted, decorated, welded, or assembled. A single establishment can combine plastics conversion with finishing and assembly operations. Core Molding Technologies, for example, operates presses ranging from 250 to 5,500 tons across compression, injection, resin-transfer, structural foam, and hand lay-up processes.[19]

Tool ownership. Molds ("tooling") are custom and expensive. Ownership varies: an OEM may own and fund the mold, the processor may amortize tooling through the piece price, or tooling may be separately billed.[19] Customer-funded tooling locks a part to a specific molder for the life of a program.

Ownership mix. The industry is dominated by privately held custom molders — family businesses, private-equity roll-ups, and foreign-owned US plants. There were about 4,697 firms operating those 5,546 establishments, so most companies run a single plant.[2] Publicly traded exposure is limited and usually shows up as one segment of a broader company (closures inside a packaging firm, resilient flooring inside a flooring firm).

3. How big it is

From the federal statistics (our ground truth):

Revenue works out to roughly $300,000-plus per worker and the average establishment does on the order of low-tens-of-millions of dollars in annual sales (receipts are a 2022 figure and headcount a 2023 figure, so these are approximations, not a matched ratio).[2][3]

Recent employment trends. BLS monthly data for the 2022-basis industry show private employment declining from 303,515 in January 2024 to 292,497 in December 2024, a 3.6% drop. This is not directly comparable with the Census employment totals because of classification and program differences (CBP uses 2017 NAICS basis while BLS QCEW uses 2022 NAICS), but it signals weakening near-term demand.[18]

Undercount caveat. Unlike industries dominated by sole proprietors, gig workers, or government, this is a formal factory industry with payrolled employees, so the Census counts it well — there is little hidden informal activity to miss. The real caveat is about boundaries, not undercount: 326199 is a residual "all other" bucket, so where a given product is classified can blur (a firm making both bottles and caps splits across codes). And market-research totals you may see for "plastic products" are far larger — often several times these figures — because they span the entire plastics-product family (all of NAICS 3261) plus resin, not just this residual slice.[5]

4. The investable universe

There is no public company that is a pure play on 326199. Public-market investors get exposure through business segments of larger, diversified firms. Because these companies span multiple NAICS codes, the figures below are total-company revenue, not the 326199 slice.

Contract manufacturers Jabil (JBL) and Flex (FLEX) also run large plastics-molding operations, though mostly tied to electronics assembly. Protolabs (PRLB) offers digitally ordered, short-run molding for prototypes and low-volume production.

Recent M&A. Amcor completed its all-stock combination with Berry Global on April 30, 2025; the combined company reported approximately 77,000 employees and more than 400 manufacturing facilities.[9][20] Novolex completed its combination with Pactiv Evergreen on April 1, 2025, so neither Berry nor Pactiv should be treated as current standalone public comparables.[21]

Major private and other owners. The bulk of the industry is private: family molders such as The Rodon Group, EVCO Plastics, and Plastek Industries; PE-backed roll-ups; and foreign-owned groups. Large private or sponsor-owned processors include Rehrig Pacific, Tank Holding, Technimark, Mack Molding, Bemis Manufacturing, Plaskolite, Spartech, and Novolex. In resilient flooring, key players include Shaw Industries (owned by Berkshire Hathaway), Tarkett (France), Mannington Mills, and Gerflor. In containers, ORBIS/Menasha, IPL, and Rubbermaid Commercial are large. The public names above are the exception; the industry's center of gravity is privately held.

5. How the money works

Owners in this industry make money as converters: they buy resin (polypropylene, polyethylene, PVC, ABS, PET, nylon, polyester, vinyl ester, dicyclopentadiene and others) plus fiberglass and additives, and sell them back as shaped parts at a markup over material plus conversion cost. A Plastics Industry Association analysis for plastics manufacturing broadly put materials at 66.6% of shipment value, payroll at 12.7%, and other operating costs at 20.7% — though the mix varies greatly between commodity rigid products, fiberglass components, medical parts, and branded building products.[22] The economics that actually drive returns:

• Resin spread and pass-through. Resin is typically 40-60%+ of the cost of a commodity part, so gross margins are thin and the central game is passing resin-price swings through to customers. Most supply contracts index price to a published resin benchmark, but usually with a lag — so margins get squeezed when resin spikes faster than prices can reset, and expand when resin falls. Suppliers are reluctant to maintain fixed pricing because many inputs are petrochemical- or natural-gas-based. Some processors, like Myers Industries, do not hedge resin with derivatives and acknowledge that significant resin-price increases can materially affect results.[13][23]
• Capacity utilization and throughput. Molds and presses are costly fixed assets, so this is an operating-leverage business. Keeping machines running near capacity, minimizing cycle time, and holding down scrap/yield loss are what separate a profitable molder from a marginal one. Capacity utilization across plastics and rubber manufacturing tracks GDP closely and has recently run in the mid-to-high 70s percent range, in line with US manufacturing overall (about 75.8% in early 2026).[14] High fixed costs make earnings sensitive to plant loading: Core Molding's large compression-press utilization fell from 73% in 2024 to 50% in 2025, while large injection-press utilization fell from 52% to 46%.[19]
• Tooling and switching costs. Because customers often fund the mold and re-tooling is expensive, custom molders enjoy sticky, multi-year programs — a real (if narrow) moat at the part level, especially in automotive and medical, where programs run for years and requalifying a new supplier is costly.
• Mix is everything. Commodity molding (buckets, hangers, generic parts) earns high-single-digit to mid-teens EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) margins in good years. Specialty and regulated niches earn far more: pharma/beauty dispensing (Aptar-type) and building-products substitution stories (composite decking) can run 20-25%+ EBITDA margins. Two "plastics" companies can have completely different economics. Core Molding reported 2025 sales of $273.8 million with a 17.4% gross margin and 5.2% operating margin, while Myers' more proprietary Material Handling segment produced an 18.1% operating margin and 24.1% adjusted EBITDA margin on $622 million of sales.[19][24]
• Working capital and capex. Cash is tied up in resin inventory and receivables; ongoing capital goes to new presses and automation. Investors watch free cash flow and return on invested capital more than headline revenue.

6. What drives demand

Demand is a broad bet on the US economy, spread across end-markets:

• Packaging (caps, closures, dispensers, containers) — the single largest pull, tied to consumer staples, beverages, food, and healthcare.[5]
• Building and construction (siding, trim, resilient flooring, composite decking) — tied to housing starts and, more importantly, repair-and-remodel spending; interest rates and home turnover matter a lot.[6][11]
• Automotive and transportation — lightweighting to improve fuel economy and electric-vehicle range keeps substituting plastic for metal; demand tracks vehicle build rates. This segment is volatile and sensitive to industrial freight, general economic conditions, and emissions regulations. Core Molding's dependence illustrates the risk: International Motors alone represented 28% of its 2025 sales.[5][19]
• Consumer/household, medical, electronics, and agriculture round out the mix.

Recent sector trends. BLS data for plastics and rubber products manufacturing (NAICS 326, the parent sector) show recent weakness: output changes of negative 6.3% in 2023, negative 1.8% in 2024, and negative 3.4% in 2025, combined with rising unit labor costs of 10.4%, 4.0%, and 2.6% in those respective years.[25]

Two forces sit on top of the GDP cycle. Secular substitution — plastic replacing wood, metal, glass, and ceramic (composite decking taking share from wood; LVT taking share from carpet and hardwood; plastic replacing metal in cars) — has been a durable tailwind. Core Molding specifically identifies lighter weight, corrosion resistance, part consolidation, and high strength-to-weight ratio as advantages over steel or aluminum.[6][19] And feedstock economics — US shale gas gives domestic resin a cheap-ethane cost advantage, which flows down to converters.[13]

7. Regulation

The industry is lightly licensed but faces a rising policy overhang, concentrated on the packaging-related products (closures, containers):

• Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Seven states — California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington — have enacted EPR laws that shift the cost of collecting and recycling packaging onto producers, with fees phasing in through the late 2020s. Washington describes itself as the seventh state and covers packaging made from plastic, paper, metal, and glass.[15][26] In many programs the legal obligor is the brand owner or importer rather than the converter, but compliance costs and recyclability specifications will be pushed through the supply chain.
• California SB 54 requires a 25% cut in single-use plastic and that all single-use packaging be recyclable or compostable by 2032 — a template other states may follow.[16]
• Bans and recycled-content mandates. A dozen states ban single-use plastic bags, several ban polystyrene foam (a different NAICS, but a signal of direction), and minimum post-consumer-recycled-content rules are escalating — driving demand for recycled resin.[15]
• Product-specific rules. FDA food-contact regulation for cups, dinnerware, and closures; FDA medical-device rules for molded medical parts; growing PFAS ("forever chemicals") restrictions affecting certain fluoropolymers and coatings; plus routine OSHA plant-safety and air-emissions compliance. EPA's plastic-parts surface-coating rule (NESHAP) regulates organic hazardous pollutants including toluene, glycol ethers, and xylenes for facilities with finishing operations.[27]
• Trade. Tariffs on resin and finished imports (including Section 301 duties on Chinese goods) shape competition with low-cost Asian producers.

None of this licenses the industry, but compliance cost and reformulation are becoming a real line item — and a competitive advantage for larger firms that can absorb it.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

This is one of the most fragmented manufacturing industries in the US. The four largest firms account for just 8.5% of receipts, the top 8 for 12.5%, the top 20 for 21.2%, and even the top 50 for only 35.7%; the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (a standard concentration measure) is an extremely low 38.8.[2] Thousands of small custom molders compete on a commodity floor with low entry barriers. An EPA economic analysis classified 4,693 of 4,965 firms as small under the applicable SBA test and attributed 201,259 of 386,178 industry employees to those firms.[28]

That fragmentation is fueling steady consolidation:

• Private-equity roll-ups of family molders — often driven by aging owners with no succession plan — are a persistent theme.
• Strategic megadeals reshaped the top of the market in 2025: Amcor completed its all-stock combination with Berry Global,[9] James Hardie acquired composite-decking and PVC-trim maker AZEK for about $8.75 billion,[10] and Novolex combined with Pactiv Evergreen.[21] Closures specialists Aptar and Silgan keep making bolt-on acquisitions.

Competitive edge comes from scale resin purchasing, automation, engineering and tooling capability, regulatory approvals (a moat in medical/pharma), and specialty IP (Aptar's dispensing systems). At the commodity end, import competition from Asia is relentless — cheap Chinese molded housewares helped push the iconic Tupperware into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2024.[17] Offsetting that, reshoring and nearshoring favor domestic molders for bulky, low-value-density, or just-in-time parts where freight and speed matter.

9. Risks

• Resin/feedstock volatility. The single biggest swing factor; a fast resin spike compresses margins until contracts reset, and vice versa.[13]
• Cyclicality. Heavy exposure to housing, autos, and industrial production means volumes fall in downturns and operating leverage cuts both ways.
• Regulatory and ESG overhang. EPR fees, bans, recycled-content mandates, PFAS rules, and emerging microplastics litigation raise cost and reputational risk, especially for single-use products. Recycled-content mandates can increase demand for qualified recycled resin while simultaneously raising sourcing and quality-control costs.[15][16]
• Import competition and tariffs. Low-cost Asian supply pressures commodity molders; trade policy can help or hurt.
• Customer concentration. Losing a major automotive or retail program can gut a molder's utilization.[19]
• Substitution and sentiment. Anti-plastic consumer sentiment and material substitution (paper, fiber, glass, wood, reusable systems) threaten some product lines even as plastic gains in others.
• Thin margins and capital intensity. Commodity converters have little cushion; capex and working capital are ongoing.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public routes. Since there's no pure play, public investors choose an end-market and buy the leader:

• Closures & dispensing — AptarGroup (ATR), Silgan (SLGN), Amcor (AMCR); the highest-margin, most defensible niche, thanks to pharma/beauty regulatory stickiness.
• Resilient flooring — Mohawk (MHK), Interface (TILE); a repair-and-remodel and substitution play.
• Building products / decking — Trex (TREX), James Hardie (JHX, now including AZEK); a wood-substitution growth story with premium margins.
• Containers & material handling — Myers Industries (MYE), Newell (NWL).
• Custom molders — Core Molding (CMT), UFP Technologies (UFPT); smaller, more cyclical, more resin-exposed.

Valuations track the mix: commodity-heavy names trade at low manufacturing multiples, while specialty dispensing and branded building-products names command premium multiples and often pay dividends.

Private routes. This is fundamentally a private-market industry, and that is where most capital is actually deployed. Options include direct ownership or buyout of family molders (a deep, succession-driven deal flow among aging owner-operators), private-equity roll-up platforms, search-fund acquisitions of single plants, and private-credit/BDC (business development company) lending to sponsor-backed molders. Attractive targets typically have customer-funded tooling, sticky qualifications, low-cost regional freight positions, differentiated engineering, credible resin pass-throughs, and unused capacity that can absorb acquired volume. The central diligence question is whether the target owns defensible products and customer relationships or merely rents press time in a price-competitive market. Deal quality hinges on customer diversification, program stickiness, resin pass-through terms, and automation.

Near-term drivers to watch (forward-looking). The direction of resin prices and the shale-gas feedstock advantage; the path of interest rates and the housing repair-and-remodel cycle; auto build rates; the cost of rolling EPR programs and recycled-content mandates; and reshoring momentum. The outlook, in judgment terms, is that of a mature, roughly GDP-paced industry — currently showing weak operating momentum with declining output and rising unit labor costs — where the value is concentrated in specialty and regulated niches (medical, pharma dispensing) and in material-substitution stories (composite decking, LVT) — not in commodity molding, which will stay fragmented, cyclical, and margin-thin.

---

Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau / NAICS Association, "NAICS Code 326199 — All Other Plastics Product Manufacturing" (2022 definition). https://www.naics.com/naics-code-description/?code=326199; https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=326199&input=326199&year=2022
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Concentration Ratios and firm/receipts data for NAICS 326199 (firms 4,697; receipts ~$122.7B; CR4 8.5%, CR8 12.5%, CR20 21.2%, CR50 35.7%; HHI 38.8), 2022. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, NAICS 326199 (establishments 5,546; employment 392,611; annual payroll ~$22.4B), 2023. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
4. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Size Standards" (NAICS 326199 = 750 employees), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
5. Grand View Research, "Plastic Resins Market Size & Share, Industry Report," 2025. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/plastic-resins-market
6. Yahoo Finance / 360Quadrants, "Luxury Vinyl Tiles Company Evaluation Report 2025" (Mohawk, Shaw, Tarkett), 2025. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/luxury-vinyl-tiles-company-evaluation-141300724.html
7. Silgan Holdings Inc., "Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Results" (net sales ~$5.9B), Jan. 2025. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250129643120/en/
8. Stock Analysis, "AptarGroup (ATR) Revenue" (~$3.6B, FY2024). https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/atr/revenue/
9. Amcor plc, "Amcor completes merger with Berry Global," 2025. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amcor-completes-merger-berry-global-112829156.html
10. James Hardie Industries / SEC Form 6-K, "James Hardie completes acquisition of AZEK" (~$8.75B; completed July 1, 2025), 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1159152/000119312525151900/d52013dex991.htm
11. Stock Analysis, "Trex Company (TREX) Revenue" (~$1.15B, FY2024). https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/trex/revenue/
12. Myers Industries Inc., "Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Results" (net sales ~$836M), Mar. 2025. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250306076380/en/Myers-Industries-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2024-Results
13. PlasticsToday, "Plastics Makers Navigate Resin Price Pressures," 2025. https://www.plasticstoday.com/resin-pricing/resin-prices-rise-as-geopolitics-reshape-plastics-supply; ICIS, "Americas Plastics Mid-Year Outlook 2025." https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/plastics-packaging-outlooks-amer/
14. Federal Reserve Board, "Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization — G.17" (manufacturing capacity utilization ~75.8%, plastics & rubber [NAICS 326] tracks GDP), 2026. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/g17.pdf
15. Proskauer Rose LLP, "The 2025 Guide to EPR Packaging Compliance" (seven-state EPR), 2025. https://www.proskauer.com/alert/the-2025-guide-to-epr-packaging-compliance
16. CalRecycle, "SB 54: Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act," 2022/2025. https://calrecycle.ca.gov/packaging/packaging-epr/
17. CNN Business, "Tupperware files for bankruptcy after years of troubles," Sept. 18, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/18/business/tupperware-files-bankruptcy/index.html
18. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), NAICS 326199, 2024 monthly data; Census 2022 SUSB documentation. https://www.bls.gov/cew/publications/employment-and-wages-annual-averages/2024/; https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2022/econ/susb/2022-susb-annual.html
19. Core Molding Technologies Inc., 2025 Form 10-K (fiscal year ending Dec. 2025; sales $273.8M, gross margin 17.4%, operating margin 5.2%; press utilization data; process descriptions). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1026655/000102665526000009/cmt-20251231.htm
20. Amcor plc, SEC filing (combined company: ~77,000 employees, 400+ facilities, ~$23B pro forma annualized sales), 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1748790/000174879026000006/amcr-20251231.htm
21. PR Newswire, "Novolex and Pactiv Evergreen Inc. Complete Combination," Apr. 1, 2025. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/novolex-and-pactiv-evergreen-inc-complete-combination-creating-a-leading-manufacturer-in-food-beverage-and-specialty-packaging-302417036.html
22. Plastics Industry Association, "Rising US Labor Costs: Implications for Plastics Industry for 2026" (materials 66.6% of shipment value, payroll 12.7%, other 20.7%), 2025. https://www.plasticsindustry.org/blog/rising-us-labor-costs-implications-for-plastics-industry-for-2026/
23. Myers Industries Inc., 2025 Form 10-K (resin hedging disclosure). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/69488/000119312526092521/mye-20251231.htm
24. Myers Industries Inc., Fourth Quarter 2025 Results (Material Handling segment: $622M sales, 18.1% operating margin, 24.1% adjusted EBITDA margin). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/69488/000119312526092509/mye-ex99_1.htm
25. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Industries at a Glance: Plastics and Rubber Products Manufacturing (NAICS 326), output and unit labor cost data 2023-2025. https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag326.htm
26. Washington State Department of Ecology, WAC 173-950 Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility, 2026. https://ecology.wa.gov/regulations-permits/laws-rules-rulemaking/rulemaking/wac-173-950
27. U.S. EPA, "Surface Coating of Plastic Parts and Products: National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP)." https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/surface-coating-plastic-parts-and-products-national-emission
28. U.S. EPA, Economic Analysis for TSCA Section 6 Risk Management (Attachment 10), 2021 industry data for NAICS 326199. https://downloads.regulations.gov/EPA-HQ-OPPT-2020-0720-0204/attachment_10.pdf