Histometrics

BDC · CEF Analytics

Public Reference

Industry Primers

Bottom-up NAICS industry primers written for both public-market and private investors. Leaf industries are researched from the ground up; every group, subsector, and sector above them reads as a contrast across the industries beneath it.

2122 industries · 24 sectors · NAICS 2022

Researched with AI assistance from official U.S. statistics and independent sources, with citations on every page. Figures are not individually verified against pinned evidence — primers marked Evidence-verified are. Industry research, not investment advice. Methodology.

National industryNAICS 332119

U.S. Metal Crown, Closure, and Other Metal Stamping: Investor Primer

North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 2022 code 332119

1. Overview

This industry combines two businesses with different economics:

  • High-volume metal crowns and closures, including bottle caps and home-canning lids.
  • Contract manufacturing of unfinished, nonautomotive stamped and spun metal parts.

Public-market exposure is indirect: listed companies usually combine closures or stamping with cans, plastics, fabrication, coatings, or other packaging. Private investors can buy regional job shops, precision-stamping specialists, or niche closure manufacturers.

The central investment questions are capacity utilization, metal-cost pass-through, customer concentration, tooling condition, quality performance, and required capital spending.

2. What it is and how it is structured

NAICS 332119 covers establishments primarily making metal crowns and closures or unfinished metal stampings and spun products. "Crown" means a bottle cap, not a dental crown. If a plant further machines or assembles a stamping into a specific finished product, Census generally classifies it in the finished product's industry; cleaning and deburring alone can remain in 332119.[1][2]

Important exclusions are:

  • Motor-vehicle stampings: NAICS 336370.
  • Metal cans, lids, and ends: NAICS 332431.
  • Coins: NAICS 339910.
  • Custom roll forming: NAICS 332114.
  • Powder-metallurgy parts: NAICS 332117.[1]

That boundary matters. A company can call itself a "metal stamper" while much of its revenue belongs in another NAICS industry. The operative distinction is an establishment's predominant activity, not everything its parent company does. A diversified manufacturer may own a 332119 plant while reporting consolidated revenue that also includes cans, plastic closures, fabrication, welding, machining, or automotive products. This is why commercial "top-company" lists based on company-level NAICS assignments are often unreliable.[3]

The current code is comparable between the 2017 and 2022 NAICS editions. The important historical break occurred in 2012, when the former Crown and Closure Manufacturing code and the former Metal Stamping code were combined. Pre-2012 time series therefore need a bridge.[4]

Ownership includes multinational packaging groups, family-owned closure manufacturers, scaled contract manufacturers, and many small local shops. Of the industry's 1,094 employer establishments, 821 had fewer than 50 workers—about three-quarters of the total.[5] Formal legal-form ownership percentages were unavailable and are not estimated.

3. How big it is

The latest ground-truth federal employer statistics are:

Metric United States
Employer establishments 1,094
Employees 45,585
Annual payroll $2.879 billion
First-quarter payroll $711.0 million

All figures are for 2023 County Business Patterns (CBP).[5]

An EPA economic-analysis table using earlier Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB) data reports preliminary receipts of $13.797 billion in 2022 dollars and identifies approximately 95.6% of employer firms as falling below the applicable SBA small-business threshold by count. These are EPA-presented figures restated in 2022 dollars, not a separately verified final 2022 Economic Census total; they are included as the only available revenue indicator.[6]

The Small Business Administration (SBA) size standard is 500 employees, so relatively substantial manufacturers can still qualify as small businesses for federal programs.[7]

Federal employer statistics exclude nonemployer businesses. That creates some undercount of owner-only tool-and-die or stamping operations, but this capital- and labor-intensive industry is not dominated by government entities or sole proprietors. Classification also misses stamping performed inside plants assigned to a finished-product industry.[1][3]

Publishable six-digit concentration-ratio and Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) figures were unavailable in the ingested federal statistics and are not inferred. No suppressed value is stated.

4. Investable universe

There is no clean listed pure play.

Company Ticker Relevance Main caveat
Silgan Holdings SLGN Closest large listed closure exposure; makes metal and plastic specialty closures and dispensing systems Specialty-closures segment ($2.7 billion revenue, $321.5 million EBIT in 2025) combines metal and plastic closures, dispensers, and dosing systems; metal-only closure revenue is not disclosed.[8]
Mayville Engineering MEC U.S. contract manufacturer with meaningful stamping, tooling, fabrication, coating, and assembly capabilities Stamping is not separately reported; end markets include commercial vehicles and other industrial equipment.[9]
NN, Inc. NNBR Precision-stamping exposure within its Power Solutions segment Segment also includes electrical contacts, connectors, and other engineered products.[10]
Crown Holdings CCK Manufactures steel crowns and aluminum closures; useful metal-packaging comparable Closures are inside broader packaging operations; 2025 "Other" revenue of $1.303 billion and segment income of $148 million include North American food cans, aerosol cans, closures, and beverage tooling—not closures-only results. Most exposure is cans and ends, which are outside NAICS 332119.[11]
Sonoco Products SON Owns metal-closure capabilities through Eviosys The acquired metal business is mainly in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; U.S. exposure is adjacent.[12]
Ball Corporation BALL Adjacent metal-packaging exposure Primarily aluminum beverage cans; less pure than SLGN or CCK for closure exposure.[13]

Representative private operators include Tecnocap, owner of the former Penn-Wheeling metal-closure business; family-linked Pelliconi; family-owned Oberg Industries; the Griffiths/Wrico stamping group; fifth-generation Boker's; Dayton Rogers; and private-equity platforms such as PrecisionX and LFM Capital's Weller.[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] This is not a market-share ranking, and plant-level NAICS classifications may differ.

5. How the money works

Closures. Manufacturers earn a small amount per unit across very large runs. Economics depend on press speed, coating and printing throughput, liner application, changeover time, scrap recovery, and line utilization. Food and beverage customers value seal integrity, consistent dimensions, traceability, and dependable delivery. Silgan describes producing twist-off and press-on steel closures and aluminum roll-on closures using multi-die presses, with liners and coatings selected to preserve seal integrity and protect the packaged product.[8]

Contract stampings. Revenue usually combines tooling or engineering charges with a per-part price. Programs can run for years, but the customer may own the dies and retain the right to transfer them. The best suppliers become embedded with the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) through design assistance, tooling knowledge, qualification, and reliable delivery. MEC warns that awarded programs may contain no minimum purchase obligation and may be terminable on limited notice; customer concentration can coexist with weak contractual volume protection.[9]

Steel and aluminum sheet are major variable inputs. Crown reported that aluminum and steel represented 47% and 8%, respectively, of its 2025 consolidated cost of products sold excluding depreciation and amortization—demonstrating the importance of metal and yield management in scaled packaging operations, though those percentages should not be applied to the average 332119 shop.[11] Scrap proceeds partly offset material cost. Contracts with escalation clauses reduce commodity exposure, but repricing lags can still compress margins. MEC says customer agreements generally pass through commodity-price changes based on market indices; more than 90% of its 2025 raw materials were sourced from U.S. suppliers, and no supplier represented more than 9% of purchases.[9] Silgan specifically reports metal-cost pass-through arrangements and sensitivity to capacity utilization.[8]

Margins are highly sensitive to fixed-cost absorption. MEC's manufacturing margin declined from $71.1 million, or 12.2% of sales, in 2024 to $54.0 million, or 9.9%, in 2025 amid weaker demand, customer destocking, restructuring, and launch costs. Its adjusted EBITDA margin was 8.6% in 2025, compared with 11.1% in 2024 and 11.2% in 2023. MEC also fabricates, extrudes, welds, coats, and assembles products, so these are company-specific reference points rather than an industry margin series.[9]

The Federal Reserve's broader fabricated-metal-products category operated at 76.9% of capacity in June 2026, below its 78.5% long-run average. This is a useful sector proxy, not a six-digit industry measure.[22]

Key operating indicators are:

  • Press and finishing-line utilization.
  • Contribution margin per press-hour.
  • Scrap yield and metal-cost recovery.
  • Die-maintenance spending and unplanned downtime.
  • Customer concentration and remaining program life.
  • On-time delivery, defect rates, and warranty claims.
  • Maintenance capital spending and free-cash-flow conversion.

6. Demand drivers

Closure demand follows packaged food, beer, soft drinks, specialty beverages, pharmaceuticals, personal care, and home-canning volumes. It is generally steadier than industrial stamping, although beverage weather, harvest cycles, customer promotions, and inventory reductions can move quarterly orders. Silgan said specialty-closure unit volume declined approximately 3% in 2025, principally because adverse first-half weather reduced North American beverage demand.[8]

Other stampings follow construction equipment, agriculture, electrical products, appliances, medical devices, aerospace, defense, data-center infrastructure, and general industrial production. Demand can move sharply when OEM customers destock. MEC's 2025 sales fell 6.0% to $546.5 million, with management citing weaker demand across nearly all end markets and customer inventory destocking.[9]

Longer-term support comes from domestic sourcing, shorter supply chains, automation, and conversion of machined parts to lower-cost stampings. Offsetting forces include lightweighting, plastic substitution, imported parts, and customers redesigning products to use fewer components. Crown identifies competition from glass, paper, flexible materials, and plastic; metal's durability and recyclability are advantages, but lightweight alternatives may win on delivered cost.[11]

Automation is the central productivity trend: servo presses, automated coil handling, robotics, die-protection sensors, machine vision, predictive maintenance, and in-line inspection reduce labor content, defects, and setup time. They also shift the bottleneck toward technicians, controls engineers, and tool-and-die skills. BLS counted approximately 55,200 U.S. tool-and-die-maker jobs in 2024 and projects employment in that occupation to decline 11% through 2034, although replacement demand will persist as experienced workers retire. Those are national occupational figures, not 332119 employment.[23]

In June 2026, broader fabricated-metal output was 2.1% above the prior-year level, but capacity utilization remained below its long-run average.[22] That reports current conditions; it does not guarantee growth for NAICS 332119.

7. Regulation

  • Worker safety: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mechanical-power-press and hazardous-energy rules govern machine guarding, die setting, maintenance, and lockout procedures under 29 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 1910.217 and 1910.147. Mechanical presses create severe point-of-operation, pinch-point, and stored-energy hazards; in one stamping enforcement case following a two-finger amputation, OSHA proposed $412,750 in penalties.[24][25]
  • Food contact: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates substances used in food-contact liners, coatings, inks, adhesives, and sealants. Each substance that may migrate into food needs an applicable authorization or exemption. Silgan reports costs associated with removing intentionally added BPA and identifies PFAS restrictions as a possible source of further product reformulation.[26][8]
  • Air emissions: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates hazardous air pollutants from metal-can surface coating, a source category that expressly covers crowns and closures because coating and curing can emit hazardous air pollutants. State air, wastewater, and hazardous-waste permits may add requirements.[27]
  • Trade: Section 232 metal tariffs can support domestic sourcing while raising the cost of imported coil, sheet, and derivative products. Domestic sourcing does not eliminate tariff exposure because tariffs can lift domestic benchmark prices as well as imported material costs. The rules changed again in 2026, making contract language and material origin important.[28]

Regulatory compliance is also commercial: a quality or food-contact failure can trigger line shutdowns, recalls, customer disqualification, or expensive reformulation.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The industry's structure is bifurcated.

Closure manufacturing rewards scale, high-speed equipment, coating and liner expertise, customer qualification, and geographic proximity to filling plants. These features favor established global or regional suppliers.

General stamping remains more fragmented. Mayville describes contract manufacturing as a highly fragmented market in which most competitors are small local operators with limited capabilities.[9] Regional proximity matters because stamped parts can be bulky and low in value relative to freight cost. MEC's ten largest customers represented 62.3% of 2025 sales; PACCAR and Deere represented 13.6% and 10.0%, respectively—illustrating how customer concentration can develop even in a fragmented supplier market.[9]

The Precision Metalforming Association says it represents a $137 billion North American metalforming industry. That figure covers stamping, fabrication, spinning, slide forming, and roll forming across the United States and Canada; it is not the market size of NAICS 332119.[19]

Consolidation can add customers, press capacity, tooling skills, and finishing operations. PrecisionX's acquisition of Hudson Technologies and LFM Capital's Weller platform illustrate active private consolidation.[20][21] The strongest acquisitions combine complementary capabilities and remove duplicated overhead. The main traps are obsolete presses, neglected dies, inherited environmental liabilities, customer overlap, and revenue that disappears when tooling transfers.

9. Risks

  • Volume and fixed costs: Low utilization quickly reduces margins.
  • Metal prices: Pass-through clauses may be incomplete or delayed; even when metal is passed through, inflation raises working-capital needs and can weaken customer demand.
  • Customer concentration: Losing one major OEM program can strand equipment and labor.
  • Tooling risk: Worn, customer-owned, or poorly documented dies can require unplanned spending.
  • Quality and recalls: Closure leaks or dimensional failures can damage customer products and brands.
  • Cyclicality: Industrial stampings are exposed to capital-equipment and inventory cycles.
  • Substitution: Plastic closures, alternative packaging, lightweighting, and part redesign can reduce metal demand.
  • Labor and safety: Tool-and-die skills are scarce, while press operations carry serious injury risk.
  • Trade policy: Tariffs can simultaneously protect domestic volume and inflate input costs.
  • Acquisition risk: Small-company financial controls, environmental records, and customer contracts may not withstand institutional diligence.

10. How to invest and outlook

Public investors can use SLGN for the clearest closure exposure, MEC for diversified U.S. stamping and fabrication, and NNBR for precision components. CCK, SON, and BALL are better treated as adjacent metal-packaging comparables. Investors should isolate segment exposure, contract pass-through, leverage, utilization, and maintenance capital rather than valuing these companies as pure industry plays.

Private investors should underwrite revenue by customer, program, die, press, and end market. Normalize earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) for owner compensation, deferred maintenance, temporary metal-price gains, and unusually high utilization. Confirm tooling ownership, transfer rights, remaining program life, environmental history, safety record, and the capital required to automate or replace presses. Attractive targets typically combine protected tooling know-how, diversified customers, recurring programs, measurable pass-through formulas, and underutilized presses that can absorb acquired volume.

Outlook—forward-looking judgment: selective and neutral-to-moderately positive. Closure demand should remain comparatively defensive, while general stampings offer more upside from domestic sourcing and automation but greater cyclical risk. Mid-2026 output growth and below-average utilization suggest some operating leverage if demand strengthens, but not a tight industry-wide capacity environment.[22] The most attractive operators have contractual metal escalators, qualified tooling, diversified customers, disciplined capital spending, and room to raise utilization.

The most common analytical error is treating NAICS 332119 as a narrow metal-cap market. It is instead a heterogeneous combination of closure manufacturing and unfinished non-automotive stamping and spinning. Metal cans are excluded; company-level revenue is not establishment-level NAICS revenue; and PMA's broad North American metalforming total is not this industry's market size.

Sources

  1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Definition: Metal Crown, Closure, and Other Metal Stamping (except Automotive), 2022, https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=332&input=332&year=2022
  2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Manual, 2022, https://www.census.gov/naics/reference_files_tools/2022_NAICS_Manual.pdf
  3. U.S. Census Bureau, Economic Census Establishment and Firm Size Statistics: Dataset Documentation, 2022, https://api.census.gov/data/2022/ecnsize.html
  4. U.S. Census Bureau, 2017 NAICS Definition File, 2017, https://www.census.gov/naics/2017NAICS/2017_Definition_File.pdf
  5. U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 County Business Patterns—United States File, 2023, https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/datasets/2023/cbp23us.zip
  6. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Economic Analysis for NAICS 332119, 2024, https://downloads.regulations.gov/EPA-HQ-OPPT-2020-0642-0728/content.pdf
  7. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards, 2023, https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
  8. Silgan Holdings, Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2025, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/849869/000162828026012202/slgn-20251231.htm
  9. Mayville Engineering Company, Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2025, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1766368/000110465926023496/tmb-20251231x10k.htm
  10. NN, Inc., Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2025, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/918541/000091854126000023/nnincform10-k2025.htm
  11. Crown Holdings, Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2025, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1219601/000162828026012904/cck-20251231.htm
  12. Sonoco Products, Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2025, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/91767/000009176726000008/son-20251231.htm
  13. Ball Corporation, Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2025, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/9389/000110465926017410/ball-20251231x10k.htm
  14. Lincoln International, Tonka Bay Has Sold Penn-Wheeling Closure to Tecnocap, 2006, https://www.lincolninternational.com/transactions/tonka-bay-has-sold-penn-wheeling-closure-to-tecnocap/
  15. Pelliconi, Company Timeline, 2026, https://www.pelliconi.com/timeline/
  16. Oberg Industries, Corporate Profile, 2026, https://www.oberg.com/about/corporate-profile/
  17. Griffiths Corporation, Griffiths/Wrico Group, 2026, https://www.griffithscorp.com/
  18. Boker's, Company History, 2026, https://www.bokers.com/about-us/history/
  19. Precision Metalforming Association, About PMA, 2026, https://www.pma.org/about/
  20. PrecisionX Group, PrecisionX Acquires Hudson Technologies, 2026, https://precisionxmfg.com/precisionx-group-acquires-hudson-technologies-expanding-deep-draw-capabilities-for-critical-industries/
  21. LFM Capital, Weller Adds Drop Stamping Capability, 2026, https://www.lfmcapital.com/news/welleraddsdrop
  22. Federal Reserve Board, Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization—G.17, 2026, https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/g17.pdf
  23. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Machinists and Tool and Die Makers, 2026, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/machinists-and-tool-and-die-makers.htm
  24. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Mechanical Power Presses and Control of Hazardous Energy Standards, 2026, https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.217
  25. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA Cites Dallas-Area Metal Stamping Company, 2021, https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/dallas/20210719
  26. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Determining the Regulatory Status of Components of a Food Contact Material, 2026, https://www.fda.gov/food/packaging-food-contact-substances-fcs/determining-regulatory-status-components-food-contact-material
  27. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Surface Coating of Metal Cans: National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, 2026, https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/surface-coating-metal-cans-national-emission-standards-hazardous
  28. White House, Strengthening Actions Taken to Adjust Imports of Aluminum, Steel, and Copper Into the United States, 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/04/strengthening-actions-taken-to-adjust-imports-of-aluminum-steel-and-copper-into-the-united-states/