U.S. Nonferrous Metal Rolling, Drawing and Extruding — NAICS 331491

1. Overview

This industry converts nickel, titanium, zinc, magnesium, lead, precious and other nonferrous metals into plate, sheet, strip, bar, rod, wire and tube. It sits between metal production or recycling and demanding end markets such as aerospace, defense, medical devices, energy and electronics.[1]

Public investors obtain mostly partial exposure through specialty-materials companies and diversified industrial groups. Private investors can acquire family-owned mills and precision processors, finance capacity expansions or consolidate narrow product niches. No listed company is a clean North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 331491 pure play.

A common misunderstanding is that this is a generic "nonferrous metals" or electrification play. Copper and aluminum—the metals most directly associated with grid expansion and mass-market electrical conductors—are expressly excluded. Electric-vehicle battery demand for nickel also does not map automatically into this code: primary nickel, battery chemicals and cathode material sit elsewhere in the industrial classification system. NAICS 331491 is primarily about forming purchased metal into mill shapes, with its most attractive economics often coming from qualified aerospace, defense, medical and corrosive-service alloys.[1]

2. What it is and how it is structured

NAICS 331491 covers establishments that:

• Roll, draw or extrude purchased nonferrous metal other than copper and aluminum.
• Recover nonferrous metal from scrap and then form it into finished mill shapes in the same establishment.[1]

Adjacent industries excluded from this definition include aluminum production and processing under NAICS 33131, copper rolling and alloying under 331420, primary nonferrous smelting and refining under 331410, secondary smelting and alloying that stops at primary forms under 331492, and wire insulation under 335929.[1] Steel and stainless-steel products, forgings, castings and metal powders may also fall outside 331491.

The metal set is unusually broad: nickel-, cobalt- and titanium-based alloys are economically important, but the code can also contain zirconium, magnesium, lead, zinc, tin and precious-metal mill products. The output is generally an engineered intermediate rather than a finished consumer product.[1]

The ownership base combines large corporate mills with specialist private businesses. Corporate legal forms represented 167 of the industry's 199 employer establishments in federal data; partnerships and sole proprietorships accounted for the other 32.[2] Legal form does not indicate whether a company is publicly traded.

3. How big it is

U.S. Census Bureau County Business Patterns reported the following employer-manufacturing footprint:

All figures are for 2023; payroll per employee is calculated from the reported totals and excludes benefits.[2] Establishments are operating locations, not companies.

A separate regulatory-analysis estimate is available from OSHA's 2024 final economic analysis for its Hazard Communication Standard. Combining Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics inputs, OSHA listed 226 firms, 254 establishments and 16,187 employees in NAICS 331491. OSHA separately estimated $8.805 billion of industry revenue and $183.3 million of profit in 2022 dollars. Those are regulatory-analysis estimates, not reported Economic Census shipments: OSHA extrapolated 2017 Statistics of U.S. Businesses receipts, benchmarked revenue to payroll and applied historical IRS-derived profit rates.[3] They should therefore be treated as an order-of-magnitude regulatory baseline, not as a precise current market size or investable-industry earnings pool.

The available federal record does not provide industry sales, firm count or concentration measures from the Economic Census itself, so none is estimated here. County Business Patterns also excludes businesses without paid employees. That omission is probably modest here because metal forming is capital-intensive; the larger measurement problem is that integrated plants may be classified by a different primary activity and diversified companies do not report results on a six-digit NAICS basis.[4]

A second misconception is to add the revenue of ATI, Carpenter, Precision Castparts and Haynes and call the result industry size. Those groups contain foreign operations, stainless steel, powders, forgings, castings, machined components and distribution activities outside the code. Conversely, NAICS statistics classify individual establishments by primary activity and can omit relevant production occurring inside establishments classified under smelting, forging or another manufacturing code. Public-company segment revenue is therefore useful for understanding economics and end markets, but it is not interchangeable with Census shipments for NAICS 331491.[1][4]

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) applied a 900-employee size standard to this industry in its 2023 table, meaning a technically "small" qualifying manufacturer could still be substantial.[5]

4. Investable universe

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and other tickers belong here—not to the industry definition itself.

Important private operators include:

• Ulbrich Stainless Steels & Special Metals: Ulbrich family-owned precision strip, foil and wire producer.[13]
• Perryman Company: privately held, vertically integrated titanium ingot, bar, wire and shaped-product manufacturer.[14]
• Fort Wayne Metals: medical and industrial wire producer owned by family investment company Axel Johnson.[15]
• Elgiloy Specialty Metals/Combined Metals: precision nickel-, cobalt- and titanium-alloy strip, foil and wire.[16]
• G.O. Carlson/Electralloy: privately owned specialty plate and alloy producer.[17]

Distribution is mixed. Mills sell directly under long-term agreements, through their own service centers and through independent distributors that hold inventory, cut material and supply smaller lots. ATI reported that about 40% of its nickel-alloy, titanium and specialty-alloy plate volume went through independent service centers in fiscal 2025.[6]

5. How the money works

The basic revenue formula is metal value plus conversion value. Producers buy or melt metal, then charge for rolling, drawing, heat treatment, finishing, inspection and certification.

Mills commonly use published-index surcharges, metal-price indices, base-price adjustments and commodity forwards. These mechanisms reduce—but do not eliminate—metal exposure. Timing mismatches arise because raw material may sit in work-in-process for months while a surcharge uses a recent reference price. Carpenter reported $531.0 million of surcharge revenue in fiscal 2025 and noted that surcharges protect dollar profit apart from lag effects but dilute reported percentage margins; approximately 40% of its sales were under firm-price arrangements, which retain more raw-material risk.[7]

Profit depends principally on:

• Product mix: Qualified aerospace, nuclear, defense and medical products generally command more conversion value than commodity shapes. When scarce qualified capacity is allocated toward difficult engine, defense or medical grades, margins can rise even while physical tonnage falls.
• Capacity utilization: Furnaces and mills carry high fixed costs, so margins can change sharply with throughput. The Federal Reserve publishes only broader primary-metals utilization data, not a valid six-digit rate for 331491.[18]
• Yield and uptime: Scrap generation, rework, maintenance outages and bottlenecks directly affect conversion cost.
• Metal pass-through: Alloy surcharges, commodity indexes and hedging reduce input-price exposure, but long production cycles create timing mismatches.[6][7]
• Working capital: Rising metal prices inflate inventory and receivables even when physical volume is unchanged. Carpenter carried $793.8 million of inventory at June 30, 2025, including $454.9 million of work-in-process, against $2.877 billion of fiscal-year sales.[7]
• Customer commitments: Long-term agreements with original-equipment manufacturers can support capacity investment but increase dependence on particular programs.[6]

Carpenter illustrates the power of mix. Fiscal 2025 consolidated sales rose to $2.877 billion and gross margin reached 26.7%, versus 21.2% in fiscal 2024. Its Specialty Alloys Operations segment generated $2.564 billion of sales and a 23.0% operating margin, even though shipment volume fell 11%; pricing, richer mix and operating efficiency more than offset the volume decline.[7]

ATI's fiscal 2025 Advanced Alloys & Solutions segment generated $2.146 billion of external sales and a 16.3% segment EBITDA margin, up from 15.4% in fiscal 2024, primarily because of exotic-alloy pricing and better nickel-alloy and titanium-mill-product mix. Its more downstream High Performance Materials & Components segment earned a 23.6% EBITDA margin. These are segment—not NAICS-industry—margins.[6]

6. Demand drivers

Aerospace is the central high-value demand driver: jet engines and airframes require heat-resistant nickel alloys and lightweight titanium. ATI derived 68% of fiscal 2025 sales from aerospace and defense; Carpenter derived 62% of its fiscal 2025 sales from that market. These percentages demonstrate the exposure of the leading public specialty-alloy companies, not necessarily the mix of every establishment classified in NAICS 331491.[6][7]

Demand responds to aircraft and engine build rates, airline utilization and engine shop visits, defense procurement and inventories throughout the aerospace supply chain. Newer engines require nickel- and cobalt-based superalloys that retain strength at temperature, while titanium offers high strength relative to weight and corrosion resistance. ATI states that newer airframes contain more titanium and newer engines use more nickel- and titanium-based alloys.[6] The Nickel Institute describes the high-temperature strength and corrosion resistance that make these alloys difficult to replace in aggressive environments.[19]

Defense and nuclear applications value traceability, domestic sourcing and long qualification histories. Medical uses include titanium implants and nickel-titanium wire; energy and chemical processing require corrosion-resistant alloys.[6][7]

Other demand comes from electronics, automotive applications, industrial equipment and precious- or refractory-metal components. These markets do not move together, but commercial aerospace and general industrial demand remain cyclical.[6]

Titanium and cobalt supply deserve particular attention. The United States produced no titanium sponge in 2025 and was completely reliant on net imports, principally from Japan, Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated titanium-sponge imports of 44,000 metric tons with a customs value of about $460 million; Japan supplied 77% of U.S. sponge imports during 2021–24.[20] Domestic rolling capacity therefore does not eliminate upstream supply risk. For cobalt, USGS estimated 79% net import reliance in 2025 and reported that 51% of U.S. cobalt consumption went into superalloys, principally for aircraft gas-turbine engines.[20]

7. Regulation

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates wastewater from rolling, drawing, extrusion, heat treatment, cleaning and surface finishing under Title 40, Part 471 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).[21] Air permits depend on furnaces, coatings and metals processed; beryllium, lead, cadmium and certain secondary-metal operations receive particular scrutiny.[22] Rolling, drawing, extrusion and associated forming operations fall under the federal effluent framework in 40 CFR Part 471, distinct from primary and secondary smelting codes such as 331492; confusing these regimes is a common classification error.[21]

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) beryllium standard uses an action level of 0.1 microgram per cubic meter over an eight-hour time-weighted average.[23] OSHA's lead rules set an eight-hour permissible exposure limit of 50 micrograms per cubic meter and an action level of 30 micrograms.[24]

Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) clause 252.225-7009 generally requires covered nickel-, cobalt-, titanium- and zirconium-containing specialty metals to originate in the United States or a qualifying country, subject to exceptions.[25] This supports qualified domestic suppliers but adds documentation and traceability costs.

Trade policy cuts both ways. Domestic mills benefit from defense sourcing rules, but dependence on imported sponge and alloying inputs makes tariffs or supply restrictions potentially inflationary. In January 2026, the Administration directed negotiations over imports of processed critical minerals and derivative products after a Section 232 investigation found a national-security threat, leaving future trade treatment a live uncertainty.[26]

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

Competition is based on metallurgy, qualification history, tolerances, yield, reliability and delivery—not just metal price. Carpenter Technology reports fewer than 10 major competitors in its most demanding applications, although several dozen smaller producers and converters compete elsewhere.[7] ATI identifies Berkshire Hathaway's Precision Castparts subsidiaries, Howmet Aerospace and Carpenter Technology as competitors in high-performance nickel, titanium and specialty-alloy products; in flat-rolled high-performance alloys it identifies Haynes International and VDM Metals.[6]

Entry barriers include expensive melt and rolling equipment, environmental permits, skilled labor, customer approval and long product-validation cycles. Once specified for an aircraft engine, medical implant or nuclear system, changing suppliers can be costly and slow.

Consolidation is evident but incomplete. Acerinox's acquisition of Haynes International combined Haynes with VDM Metals in a larger high-performance-alloys platform; Acerinox announced approximately $200 million of planned investment in the combined U.S. business over four years.[12] Nevertheless, family-owned companies retain defensible positions in precision strip, foil, wire, titanium and medical alloys.

9. Risks

• Cyclicality: Aircraft-program delays, industrial recessions and customer destocking can leave expensive capacity underused. USGS has documented repeated titanium capacity expansions followed by excess capacity when anticipated aircraft programs were delayed or cut.[27]
• Input exposure: Nickel, cobalt, molybdenum, titanium, scrap, industrial gases and energy are volatile; surcharge recovery may lag.[6][7]
• Supply concentration: Titanium sponge and several alloying elements depend heavily on foreign sources.[20]
• Plant concentration: Premium alloys rely on specialized melting, rolling and finishing equipment with few qualified alternatives. Carpenter specifically identifies its facilities in Reading and Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and Athens, Alabama, as concentrations of specialized equipment vulnerable to failures or catastrophic events.[7]
• Operational failures: Furnace outages, poor yield, contamination or failed certification can disrupt entire customer programs.
• Customer concentration: Long-term contracts improve visibility but can tie returns to a few manufacturers and platforms.
• Labor risk: The industry depends on experienced furnace operators, metallurgists, maintenance technicians, inspectors and process engineers. Carpenter explicitly cites the ability to hire and retain metallurgists and other skilled personnel, along with labor disputes and work stoppages, as material risks.[7]
• Capital intensity: Maintenance cannot be deferred indefinitely, while speculative expansion can create excess capacity.
• Environmental and worker liabilities: Historical contamination or inadequate exposure controls can make an apparently cheap private acquisition expensive.
• Substitution and technology: Additive manufacturing, composites or redesigned components can reduce demand for some conventional mill forms. Additive manufacturing can reduce buy-to-fly waste and shift demand from bar or billet toward powder, although it can also expand use of high-performance alloys.
• Trade policy: Defense sourcing rules benefit domestic mills, but dependence on imported sponge and alloying inputs makes tariffs or supply restrictions potentially inflationary.[26]

10. How to invest and outlook

For public investments, compare qualified aerospace and defense exposure, backlog quality, conversion margins, surcharge lag, mill utilization, capital spending, free cash flow and customer concentration. Conglomerate investors should determine whether the relevant operation is large enough to influence group earnings. An investor should consequently separate accounting earnings from cash generation and examine inventory age, customer advances, consigned raw material, surcharge lags and the cash cost of a production ramp.

Private-company diligence should emphasize customer and program concentration, ownership of qualifications, change-of-control approvals, furnace and mill bottlenecks, maintenance capital, scrap accounting, inventory valuation, environmental history and skilled-worker retention. Expansion projects are safer when supported by contractual customer demand.

Forward-looking judgment: The strongest long-term prospects appear in qualified aerospace, defense, nuclear, medical and high-temperature power applications. Domestic titanium and specialty-alloy capacity also has strategic value. Near-term earnings will remain uneven because aircraft schedules, maintenance outages, metal-cost timing, customer inventories and product mix can outweigh underlying demand. Investors should favor demonstrated qualification advantages and disciplined, customer-backed capacity additions over simple exposure to metal prices.

Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Sector 31–33 Definitions: NAICS 331491 (2022).
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 County Business Patterns (2025 release).
3. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Hazard Communication Standard Final Rule: Economic Analysis (2024).
4. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns: About the Program (current).
5. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Size Standards (2023).
6. ATI Inc., Form 10-K for Fiscal 2025 (2026).
7. Carpenter Technology Corporation, Form 10-K for Fiscal 2025 (2025).
8. Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Form 10-K for 2025 (2026).
9. Materion Corporation, Form 10-K for 2025 (2026).
10. Luxfer Holdings PLC, Form 10-K for 2025 (2026).
11. AMETEK Inc., Form 10-K for 2025 (2026).
12. Acerinox, Acerinox Completes the Acquisition of Haynes International (2024).
13. Ulbrich Stainless Steels & Special Metals, Who We Are (current).
14. Perryman Company, Who We Are (current).
15. Fort Wayne Metals, Company News and Ownership Transition (2026).
16. Elgiloy Specialty Metals, About Us (current).
17. G.O. Carlson, Company Overview (current).
18. Federal Reserve Board, Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, Table 2 (2026).
19. Nickel Institute, Nickel Alloys (current).
20. U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 (2026).
21. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Nonferrous Metals Forming and Metal Powders Effluent Guidelines (2026).
22. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Clean Air Act Standards and Guidelines for the Metals Production Industry (2026).
23. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Beryllium: Frequently Asked Questions (current).
24. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Lead: Overview (current).
25. Acquisition.gov, DFARS 252.225-7009—Restriction on Acquisition of Certain Articles Containing Specialty Metals (2026).
26. The White House, Adjusting Imports of Processed Critical Minerals and Their Derivative Products into the United States (2026).
27. U.S. Geological Survey, Titanium Statistical Compendium (current).