Rubber and Plastics Hoses and Belting Manufacturing (U.S.)

NAICS 2022 code 32622 — an investor's primer (industry rollup)

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1. Overview

NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 32622 covers the U.S. factories that make hoses and belting out of rubber and plastic: the hydraulic hose on an excavator, the serpentine belt turning a car's alternator, the mile-long conveyor belt hauling ore out of a mine, the reinforced process hose feeding a chemical plant, and the garden hose in the shed.[1]

For an investor, this is a classic industrial-consumables ("picks-and-shovels") niche. The products wear out on a schedule and must be replaced, which gives the best operators a steady aftermarket (replacement-parts) revenue stream layered on top of more cyclical sales to equipment builders. It is a mature, moderately profitable manufacturing industry that rides the broader cycles of vehicles, construction, agriculture, mining and general industry — with newer growth pockets in automation, warehouse systems, and liquid-cooled data centers.[2]

This page is a short rollup. The 5-digit industry 32622 is a container: everything real happens one level down, so read the full detail in the child primer for 326220.

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

The 5-digit NAICS industry 32622 has exactly one 6-digit child:

• 326220 — Rubber and Plastics Hoses and Belting Manufacturing.

That is the whole level. There is no second child to blend in, no aggregation to do, and no averaging that could hide differences between sub-industries. 32622 is 326220 under a different number of digits — the same factories, the same firms, the same shipments, the same federal statistics. Wherever the taxonomy carries a single child up to its parent unchanged, this is what you get: a pass-through.

So this page states the level's own ground-truth figures and then hands you to the child. For the full treatment — product families (power-transmission belts vs. conveyor belts vs. the many kinds of hose), the exclusions that make federal factory stats understate the products' real footprint, the company-by-company investable universe, and the consolidation story — see the 326220 primer.

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3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

U.S. federal statistics for NAICS 32622 (identical to 326220, since it is the only child):

A small, well-defined manufacturing industry: a couple hundred companies, roughly $7–8 billion of domestic factory output (depending on year and Census measure), and roughly 20,000 workers earning solidly above the private-sector average — consistent with skilled machine-operator and technical work.

Concentration. The top 4 firms make 42.3% of shipments, the top 8 55%, the top 20 71.4%, and the top 50 90%.[3] The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard concentration score where the U.S. Department of Justice treats anything below 1,500 as "unconcentrated") is 600.4.[3] Read together: a few large leaders take a big slice, but the market overall is competitive, with a long tail of smaller specialists — no single firm dominates.

Undercount / footprint caveat. These are real factories with payrolls, so the Census captures the industry cleanly; the distortion runs the other way. The $7–8 billion is domestic factory shipments of hose and belting only. The economic activity around these products is larger because (a) the biggest players are global and book most revenue outside this one U.S. code and outside the country, and (b) commercial "industrial hose market" estimates fold in fittings, finished assemblies and distribution that Census assigns to other codes.[6] NAHAD reported a $2.8 billion industrial-hose market at end-user "street" prices for 2024, including estimated distributor margin — a different perimeter and valuation point from the Census's factory-level measure.[7] Treat the Census figures as the honest measure of U.S. manufacturing output, not the products' total market. The child primer details exactly which activities (hose assemblies, tubing, mechanical rubber goods) are counted elsewhere.

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4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

Because the level equals its one child, so does its investable map. There is one near-pure, U.S.-listed way to own the industry directly — Gates Industrial (NYSE: GTES), a global maker of power-transmission belts and fluid-power (hydraulic) hose with 2025 sales of $3.44 billion and a market cap of roughly $6–7 billion.[2][8] Everything else is an embedded exposure inside a bigger company (Parker Hannifin, hose within its Fluid Connectors unit; Michelin and Bridgestone, conveyor belting as a minor slice of a tire major) or a privately held platform (ContiTech, being sold to Lone Star Funds; Eaton's former hydraulics unit, now Danfoss).[9][10][11] There is no exchange-traded fund dedicated to this niche.

Value concentrates at the top of the single child: two of the three largest global platforms now sit in private hands, which is the clearest signal of where concentrated ownership lives. The full company table, scale figures and tickers are in the 326220 primer, Section 4.

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5. How the money works

A manufacturing spread-and-throughput business: owners earn the gap between what raw materials and factory time cost and what customers pay for a finished, engineered part. The levers that matter — the material spread and cost pass-through (rubber, carbon black, resin and reinforcement track oil and petrochemical prices), capacity utilization and operating leverage on fixed-cost curing and extrusion lines, and above all the replacement-vs-original-equipment (OE) mix — are the same at this level as in the child, because they are the child.[2][12]

The profit engine is the replacement (aftermarket) side: consumable wear parts sold through distribution are higher-margin, stickier and steadier than lower-margin OE sales to equipment builders. A replacement-heavy mix is what lets the best operators grow profit even in a down cycle. Gates illustrates the model: aftermarket channels supplied 68% of its global sales in 2025 versus 32% from OEMs; in North America and EMEA the aftermarket share was approximately 73%.[2] The company posted an adjusted EBITDA margin of 22.4% globally for 2025.[2] The metrics to watch — gross and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) margin, capacity utilization, replacement-vs-OE mix, and core organic volume — are laid out with worked examples in 326220, Section 5.

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6. Demand drivers

Demand is derived — it comes from whatever the hose or belt is attached to — and splits into a resilient half and a cyclical half: the automotive fleet, age and miles driven (replacement belts and hoses, the most stable pool); industrial production and maintenance (process hose and industrial belt); the cyclical construction, agriculture and mining markets (hydraulic hose and conveyor belting that swing with the equipment and commodity cycle); energy/water/infrastructure; automation and warehouse systems; liquid-cooled data centers (an emerging application as AI workloads drive denser thermal loads); and seasonal consumer hose.[2][9] Full breakdown in the child primer.

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7. Regulation

The industry is standards- and safety-regulated, not economically regulated — no price or entry controls. The key regimes: underground-mine conveyor belt must be flame-resistant and approved under MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) rules at 30 CFR Part 14; hydraulic hose is built to SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) J517 pressure classes; food/water-contact hose must meet FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and NSF/3-A requirements; and trade policy (Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods) shapes import competition in the lower-value segments.[13][14][15] These apply to the single child in full; see 326220, Section 7.

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8. Consolidation

The consolidation story is a portfolio reshuffle by strategics, with private equity picking up the pieces. Continental AG is exiting industrials to become a pure tire company and agreed in July 2026 to sell ContiTech (~22,000 employees) to an affiliate of Lone Star Funds for €4.0 billion, plus potential performance-based payments of up to €250 million; Eaton sold its Hydraulics business to Danfoss for $3.3 billion in 2021; Dayco was acquired by Hidden Harbor Capital Partners in 2022, with its OEM-oriented Propulsion Solutions business subsequently acquired by AURELIUS; and Gates itself is a private-equity creation, built and floated by Blackstone.[8][10][11][16][17] Large diversified owners treat hose-and-belting as non-core and hand it to financial buyers who run these consumables platforms for cash. Expect further bolt-on roll-ups of the fragmented ~180-firm tail. Detail in 326220, Section 8.

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9. Risks

The same risks that face the child face the level: cyclicality in OE demand from construction, agriculture, mining and general industry; input-cost volatility in oil-linked rubber, carbon black and resin; import competition and trade policy in the lower-value segments; customer/channel concentration; labor availability for skilled compounding, extrusion, curing, quality control, and engineering work; the EV (electric-vehicle) transition, which removes some traditional under-hood hoses and belts while adding new thermal-management hose (a mixed, product-specific effect); and financial-owner leverage, since several leaders now sit under private equity.[2][12][15] Fuller discussion in the child primer.

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10. How to invest & outlook

Public route: the only clean listed exposure is Gates Industrial (GTES) — a global belts-and-hydraulics maker with a replacement-heavy, margin-resilient model; beyond it, Parker Hannifin (PH), Michelin and Bridgestone offer hose or belting only as a minor line inside much larger, differently-driven businesses. No dedicated fund exists.[2] Private route: this is where the industry mostly lives — private-equity platforms (Lone Star's ContiTech, Danfoss's hydraulics, Hidden Harbor's Dayco) and a long tail of founder-owned specialists in food-grade, mining-belt and custom industrial hose, fertile ground for buy-and-build roll-ups.

Outlook: a mature, low-single-digit-growth industry whose fortunes turn on the timing of an industrial and equipment-cycle recovery, the durability of the resilient automotive-aftermarket pool, oil-linked raw-material costs and pricing discipline, U.S. reshoring and infrastructure spending, the EV transition's mixed mix-effects, and emerging opportunities in data-center cooling and automation — with continued consolidation under financial and specialist owners the likeliest path.

Because 32622 is a single-child pass-through, this is the same investment thesis as its child. For the complete, company-level treatment, read the 326220 primer.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, NAICS 2022 Definition — 326220 Rubber and Plastics Hoses and Belting Manufacturing, 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=326220&year=2022
2. Gates Industrial Corporation plc, Form 10-K for fiscal year ended January 4, 2026, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1718512/000162828026007719/gtes-20251231.htm
3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — value of shipments/receipts, firm count and concentration ratios (CR4, CR8, CR20, CR50, HHI), NAICS 326220/32622, 2022. https://data.census.gov/
4. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Integrated Economic Survey — NAICS 326220 sales/revenue, 2023. https://data.census.gov/table/AIESBASICTIMESERIES.AIES31BASIC01?codeset=naics~32622&g=010XX00US
5. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (CBP), NAICS 326220 — establishments, employment, annual payroll, 2023. https://data.census.gov/
6. The Insight Partners, North America Industrial Hose Market (market-size estimate, broader than NAICS 326220), 2024. https://www.theinsightpartners.com/pr/north-america-industrial-hose-market
7. NAHAD, Markets Monitor Q1 2024 (industrial hose end-user market estimate). https://nahad.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/NAHAD-Markets-Q12024.pdf
8. Investing.com / companiesmarketcap, Blackstone secondary offerings and Gates Industrial (GTES) market capitalization, 2024–2026. https://companiesmarketcap.com/gates-industrial-corp/marketcap/
9. Parker Hannifin Corporation, Fact Sheet 2024 / FY2024 Annual Report, 2024. https://www.parker.com/content/dam/Parker-com/About-Us/Literature/PH-Fact-Sheet-2024.pdf
10. Modern Distribution Management, Continental to Sell ContiTech to Lone Star Funds for $4.6B, 2025. https://www.mdm.com/top-distributor-sectors/hose-hose-accessories-distribution/continental-to-sell-contitech-to-lone-star-funds-for-4-6b/
11. CrossCo / Construction Equipment, Danfoss Acquires Eaton Hydraulics Business ($3.3 billion, 2021), 2021. https://www.crossco.com/blog/danfoss-acquires-eaton-hydraulics/
12. Procurement Resource, Synthetic Rubber and Natural Rubber Price Trends (feedstock-linked, 2024 softening), 2024–2025. https://www.procurementresource.com/resource-center/synthetic-rubber-price-trends
13. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), 30 CFR Part 14 — Requirements for the Approval of Flame-Resistant Conveyor Belts (MSHA), current. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-30/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-14
14. SAE International (via Insane Hydraulics), SAE J517 Hydraulic Hose Standard (and related SAE automotive hose specs), current. https://www.insanehydraulics.com/letstalk/saehosestandard.html
15. White & Case LLP / USTR, United States Finalizes Section 301 Tariff Increases on Imports from China (incl. plastics/rubber hose, HTS 3917.39), 2024. https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/united-states-finalizes-section-301-tariff-increases-imports-china
16. Hidden Harbor Capital Partners, Closes on Acquisition of Dayco LLC, 2022. https://hh-cp.com/hidden-harbor-capital-partners-closes-on-acquisition-of-dayco-llc/
17. AURELIUS Group, AURELIUS Private Equity Acquires Dayco's Propulsion Solutions Business. https://www.aurelius-group.com/aurelius-private-equity-acquires-daycos-propulsion-solutions-business-new