U.S. Spring and Wire Product Manufacturing: Investor Primer — NAICS 3326 (industry group)

Short rollup note. North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code 3326 is an industry group that contains exactly one child industry, 33261 — Spring and Wire Product Manufacturing. Because there is only one child, this level is that child: the same plants, the same output, the same federal totals. This page gives the level's own ground-truth figures and a quick orientation, then hands off. For full detail — the two-way split inside 33261, the company-by-company investable universe, economics, demand, regulation, consolidation and risks — read the NAICS 33261 primer.

1. Overview

Spring and Wire Product Manufacturing takes purchased steel and nonferrous wire, strip and rod and converts it into finished components — coil and leaf springs, precision springs, and fabricated wire goods such as fencing, welded mesh, concrete-reinforcing strand, cable, baskets, racks, nails and staples. These parts are cheap relative to the machines, vehicles, buildings and infrastructure they end up in, but they are load-bearing and safety-critical, so demand is recurring and quality matters. It is a small, fragmented, mostly private industry with durable component demand and consolidation potential, offset by cyclicality, steel-price exposure and high fixed-cost operating leverage.

At the 3326 level there is nothing to average across siblings, because there are no siblings — the group equals its single child, 33261. The analytically useful contrast sits one level further down, between the two national industries inside that child.

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

NAICS is a nested hierarchy: each 4-digit industry group can hold several 5-digit industries. Here it holds just one:

• 33261 — Spring and Wire Product Manufacturing — the entire contents of industry group 3326.

So the rollup adds nothing to the child; the numbers are identical by construction. The economically meaningful split happens one level down, inside 33261, which divides into two national industries with genuinely different economics:

• 332613 — Spring Manufacturing: springs made from purchased wire, strip or rod; value comes from engineering, tight tolerances, fatigue life and customer certification.
• 332618 — Other Fabricated Wire Product Manufacturing: fencing, mesh, concrete strand, cable, rope, baskets, racks, nails and staples; value comes from the conversion spread (finished price minus wire cost) and keeping lines busy.

The takeaway carried up from the child, now quantified: the wire-products side is the larger of the two by plant count, jobs and payroll, but its plants are smaller and more commodity-driven, while the spring side is more consolidated into larger, more engineering-intensive plants. On 2023 County Business Patterns data the wire side accounts for 710 of the level's 1,051 establishments, 19,060 of its 34,731 jobs and $1.181 billion of its $2.137 billion payroll, against 341 plants, 15,671 jobs and $955.9 million on the spring side — roughly 68% of plants but 55% of employment, which works out to about 27 employees per wire plant against about 46 per spring plant.[1]

One thing the level can do that neither child can: supply current concentration evidence. The children's own concentration figures are stale and point in opposite directions — a special 2012 tabulation put the spring four-firm receipts share at 31.5%[3], while the 2002 census showed a 14.8% four-firm shipment share and a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) of 87.1 on the wire side[4]. Neither is current, and neither is comparable to the 2022 Economic Census statistics for this level in Section 3.[2] Both children also exclude the same activity: establishments that draw their own wire before fabricating are classified in primary metals (NAICS subsector 331), with finished mattresses in 337910, non-spring steering and suspension parts in 336330 and watch and clock springs in 334519.[5] The full contrast — including who owns each side and how you would buy in — is in the 33261 primer, Section 2.

3. Size — this level's federal figures

Figures below are our ground-truth federal extract for NAICS 3326. Because 3326 contains only 33261, they equal the child's totals exactly.

This is a fragmented, unconcentrated industry: 874 firms across 1,051 establishments, the four largest making just 17.2% of receipts, and 50 firms needed to reach 55.1%. The HHI of 136.5 sits far below the 1,500 mark that U.S. antitrust agencies treat as the start of "moderate" concentration. These 2022 level statistics are the only current concentration figures available anywhere in this family — neither child could obtain a current receipts, firm-count or concentration figure at its own level, which is the one respect in which this rollup is more informative than the page below it.

The dollar totals come from different programs and must not be netted. Receipts ($11.094 billion, 2022 EC) come from a different program and year than the employment and payroll figures (2023 CBP), and from a different program again than the spring child's own revenue estimate of $4.713 billion for 2023, taken from the Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES).[7] The children make the hazard concrete: for NAICS 332613 alone, AIES reports 15,382 employees and $928.3 million of payroll against CBP's 15,671 and $955.9 million for the same industry and the same year.[1][7] No comparable AIES receipts figure exists for the wire child, so no defensible per-child revenue split exists — treat the ~$11 billion as the best available level total and the ~$4.7 billion springs estimate as directional only, and do not subtract one from the other. Our extract holds no federal margin or return-on-capital figure for this level, and no suppressed value has been inferred.

The employment total is program-specific too. The 34,731 figure above is a CBP number. On the wire side, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counts 23,604 employees in 2024 against CBP's 19,060 in 2023 — a gap of roughly a quarter arising from different programs and reference periods.[1][8] A third frame, an American Wire Producers Association compilation built on BLS data, reports 889 wire-fabricator facilities, 24,481 employees and $1.588 billion of annual wages as of December 2023; "facility," QCEW reporting unit and Census employer establishment are not equivalent, so that count cannot be spliced into the Census series.[9] The practical rule for this level: pick one program and stay inside it.

Undercount caveat. CBP covers only establishments with paid employees, so it omits nonemployer (self-employed) businesses — probably a modest omission here, since staffed factory production is the norm. The larger gap is output that lands in another NAICS: springs and wire goods made inside vertically integrated wire mills (NAICS 331), bedding plants (337910) or auto-parts factories (336330) do not appear in these totals at all, and integrated steelmakers and wire drawers can compete head-on with plants inside the code without ever appearing in its totals. The true footprint of spring and wire fabrication is therefore somewhat larger than the figures show — and part of the wire side's long employment decline is reclassification rather than lost activity.[8]

4. Investable universe — where value concentrates

There is no single stock that is "spring and wire product manufacturing," none of the listed names reports U.S. NAICS 33261 revenue separately, and public access is asymmetric: the only reasonably direct U.S. listing sits on the wire-products side — Insteel Industries (New York Stock Exchange: IIIN), a maker of prestressed-concrete strand and welded wire reinforcement, and even that name is a concrete-reinforcement business that starts from wire rod rather than purchased wire.[10] Spring exposure is foreign or diversified — Rosebank Industries (London: ROSE), which completed its acquisition of the MW Components platform in May 2026[12], plus Sweden's Beijer Alma, Japan's NHK Spring and Advanex — while Leggett & Platt spans both sides but is bedding-heavy. Large private operators dominate both sides.

One sub-market is far more concentrated than the level as a whole: the Wire Rope Technical Board says its members manufacture more than 90% of U.S. wire-rope output.[13] That applies to rope only, not to nails, fencing, baskets or mesh, and is a reminder that the level's low aggregate HHI conceals niches with very different structures. The full name-by-name map — diversified steelmakers, foreign listings, private-equity (PE) platforms and family firms, split by child — is in the 33261 primer, Section 4. Tickers here identify economic exposures, not a clean peer group.

5. How the money works

Both sides buy wire (or wire rod) as their dominant variable input, so both live on the spread between what they sell finished parts for and what they pay for steel — but they earn it differently. Springs reward engineering content, tolerances and certification, especially in aerospace, defense, medical and automotive work. Wire products are more explicitly a conversion-spread business (finished price minus wire cost minus conversion and delivery cost), where selling prices track raw-material costs with a lag and capacity utilization is the swing factor in profitability. Both carry heavy fixed costs and meaningful operating leverage.

There is no such thing as an industry margin at this level. No federal margin figure exists for 3326 or either grandchild, and the listed proxies are scattered: Insteel's gross margin ran 10.1% in fiscal 2023, 9.4% in fiscal 2024 and 14.4% in fiscal 2025 on fiscal-2025 net sales of $647.7 million, the rebound driven mainly by a better selling-price/raw-material spread[10]; Beijer Alma's Lesjöfors spring platform earned roughly 17.7% adjusted EBITA globally[14]; NHK Spring's global Automotive Suspension Springs segment earned about 0.3% operating margin[15]; and Leggett & Platt's Bedding Products segment earned a 6.3% EBIT margin on $1.558 billion of 2025 trade sales[16]. A number ranging from 0.3% to 17.7% is not a benchmark — mix, utilization and execution dominate.

Two context points that are not level benchmarks: producer price indexes for the two sides diverge sharply but from different base months — springs rose roughly 108% from December 2019 to May 2026[17], wire products roughly 48% from December 2020 to May 2026[18] — so the increases are not directly comparable; and the Federal Reserve publishes no utilization series for this level, though broader fabricated-metal-products capacity utilization was 76.9% in June 2026 against a 78.5% long-run average.[19] See the 33261 primer, Section 5, for the operating metrics that matter.

6. Demand drivers

End markets overlap but do not always cycle together: construction and infrastructure (reinforcement, strand, fencing, cable — mainly wire products); automotive, bedding, and aerospace/defense/medical (mainly springs); agriculture and residential (wire products); and energy and digital infrastructure such as the electric grid and data centers (wire products). Public-works spending and domestic-content rules matter most on the wire side; long qualification cycles create stickier programs on the spring side.

The children add two corrections to any simple growth story. The agricultural base is shrinking — the U.S. Department of Agriculture counted 732,123 farms with cattle in 2022, down 17% from 2017, so livestock fencing is replacement demand rather than a secular-growth category[20] — and bedding remains soft, with Leggett reporting continued weakness in U.S. and European bedding through 2025 alongside uncertainty around delayed electric-vehicle programs[16]. Electrification itself is two-sided for springs: suspension and seating content persists while internal-combustion valve and transmission content declines. Detail in the 33261 primer, Section 6.

7. Regulation

Regulation is about safety, environment and trade rather than industry-specific licensing: Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) machine-guarding and hazardous-energy rules, which the children show are enforced against both spring and wire plants after amputation incidents; Environmental Protection Agency rules on plating, galvanizing and coating; and customer certifications (automotive, aerospace, medical) that often matter as much as government rules, mainly on the spring side. The distinctive feature is an unusually important two-sided trade policy. U.S. Customs and Border Protection states that Section 232 duties on steel articles and derivative steel articles rose from 25% to 50% on June 4, 2025[21], and as of April 2026 steel-spring tariff lines 7320.10 through 7320.90 and covered core wire inputs sat in the 50% full-value annex, subject to product, origin and country exceptions[22]. Antidumping and countervailing-duty orders also remain on certain prestressed-concrete steel strand imports[23], and Build America, Buy America requirements can favor domestic mesh, reinforcing wire and strand on federally assisted highway projects[24]. Protection is not the same as demand: Leggett reported that Section 232 steel tariffs widened its rod and wire metal margins without producing noticeable improvement in innerspring demand.[16] Full treatment in the 33261 primer, Section 7.

8. Consolidation

The fragmented structure above (874 firms, HHI 136.5, CR4 just 17.2%) is exactly the setup roll-up buyers look for, and both sides now supply priced evidence of activity. On the spring side, Rosebank bought MW Components in May 2026 for approximately $950 million, around 10 times 2025 EBITDA — a platform of 24 U.S. facilities, more than 1,750 employees and more than 24 brands, assembled in part through nine add-on acquisitions under its previous sponsor[11][12] — and One Equity Partners carved Associated Spring out of Barnes in 2024[25]. On the wire side, Insteel paid $67.0 million for substantially all Engineered Wire Products assets and $5.1 million for selected O'Brien Wire Products assets in fiscal 2025, then closed or relocated the acquired capacity into its existing network — consolidation of capacity rather than accumulation of it.[10] The counter-risk differs by side: in springs, much value lives in engineers, toolmakers and undocumented process knowledge that integration can destroy; in wire products, the risk is acquiring old equipment or excess regional capacity without real procurement or utilization synergy. The MW multiple is a genuine market data point, but it priced a diversified precision-components platform, not a stand-alone spring shop. See the 33261 primer, Section 8.

9. Risks

Shared across the level: raw-material (steel and specialty-alloy) volatility with no liquid hedge for a specific wire-rod grade and location; cyclicality amplified by operating leverage; utilization and inventory losses when steel prices fall; customer concentration and cost-downs; trade-policy swings that can widen margins without lifting demand; product-failure and liability exposure; environmental liabilities at older coating and plating sites; skilled-labor shortages; and post-acquisition integration risk.

Two risks the children now document more firmly. Substitution is real on both sides — composites threaten steel leaf and coil springs, with Hendrickson actively marketing composite springs for lower weight and better packaging[26], while synthetic rope competes with steel rope where weight, corrosion and handling matter, and Bekaert invests in both, which is itself evidence of a genuine transition[27]. And the wire side carries a long structural decline: BLS records industry employment falling 62.3%, from 62,691 in 2000 to 23,604 in 2024, on automation, imports, consolidation and reclassification into other codes.[8] Part of that is definitional rather than lost output, but any bullish wire-side case has to confront it. The 33261 primer, Section 9, notes where each risk bites hardest.

10. How to invest and outlook

Public investors should treat this level as a set of indirect exposures — the tightest listed fit is Insteel (wire products), with diversified and foreign names elsewhere and no exchange-traded fund (ETF) offering precise exposure. Given the 0.3%-to-17.7% spread in realized segment margins across the available proxies, headline group revenue tells you almost nothing; value names against mid-cycle earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), not peak conversion spreads. Private investors should normalize EBITDA across the cycle and diligence customer concentration, pass-through formulas, certifications, equipment condition and working capital, underwriting effective rather than nameplate capacity. The MW transaction at roughly 10 times EBITDA is a useful reference point but prices a multi-facility platform, not a single shop.[12]

Forward-looking judgment. The level looks more durable than fast-growing. The wire-products side has the better structural tailwind (infrastructure, grid, data centers, domestic-content rules) but a more cyclical, commodity base, a shrinking agricultural end market and a long history of employment attrition; the spring side is steadier, anchored by aerospace, defense, medical and reshoring demand, but exposed to bedding weakness, gradual auto electrification and a credible composites threat in heavy-duty suspensions. Consolidation should continue in a still-fragmented field, and disciplined entry price plus plant-level diligence will matter more than broad market growth. The full how-to-invest checklist is in the 33261 primer, Section 10 — start there for any real position.

Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, "County Business Patterns: 2023" (establishments, employment and payroll for NAICS 33261, 332613 and 332618), 2025, https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2023/econ/cbp/2023-cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 Economic Census — Concentration and Summary Statistics, NAICS 33261" (firms, receipts, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI), 2022.
3. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Proposed Rule: Small Business Size Standards," 2022, https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2022-08091.pdf
4. U.S. Census Bureau, "Concentration Ratios in Manufacturing: 2002," 2006, https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/economic-census/2002/manufacturing-reports/subject-series/ec0231sr1.pdf
5. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 North American Industry Classification System Manual (definitions and cross-references for NAICS 332613 and 332618), 2022, https://www.census.gov/naics/reference_files_tools/2022_NAICS_Manual.pdf
6. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Small Business Size Standards," 2023, https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
7. U.S. Census Bureau, "AIES00BASIC: All Sectors Summary Statistics" (NAICS 332613 receipts, employment and payroll estimates), 2026, https://data.census.gov/table/AIESBASICTIMESERIES.AIES00BASIC?codeset=naics~332613&g=010XX00US
8. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Industries with Employment Decreases from 2000 to 2024," 2025, https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2025/industries-with-employment-decreases-from-2000-to-2024.htm
9. American Wire Producers Association, State of the United States Wire and Wire Products Industry: National Data 2023, 2024, https://www.awpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/National-Data-2023.pdf
10. Insteel Industries, Annual Report on Form 10-K, 2025, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/764401/000143774925031597/iiin20250927_10k.htm
11. American Securities, "American Securities Completes Sale of MW Components to Rosebank Industries," 2026, https://www.american-securities.com/news/press-release/american-securities-completes-sale-of-mw-components-to-rosebank-industries/
12. Rosebank Industries, "Completion of ASP MWI Holdings Inc Acquisition," 2026, https://www.investegate.co.uk/announcement/rns/rosebank-industries-plc--rose/completion-of-asp-mwi-holdings-inc-acquisition-/9590603
13. Wire Rope Technical Board, "About WRTB," 2026, https://www.wireropetechnicalboard.org/
14. Beijer Alma, "Q4 2025 Report," 2026, https://beijercomponents.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/ba-2025-q4-en.pdf
15. NHK Spring, "Annual Securities Report," 2025, https://www.nhkspg.co.jp/en/news/20250827
16. Leggett & Platt, "Form 10-K for 2025," 2026, https://leggett.com/leggett-form-10k-2025.htm
17. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, "Producer Price Index: Spring Manufacturing," 2026, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU332613332613
18. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Producer Price Index: NAICS 332618," 2026, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/PCU332618332618
19. Federal Reserve Board, "Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, Table 2 Supplement," 2026, https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/table2_sup.htm
20. U.S. Department of Agriculture, "2022 Census of Agriculture Highlights: Cattle and Cattle on Feed," 2024, https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights/2024/Census22_HL_Cattle%20and%20Cattle%20on%20Feed_final.pdf
21. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, "Section 232 Steel Tariff Guidance," 2025, https://www.help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1134
22. White House, "Annex I-A: Section 232 Tariff Products," 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Annex-I-A.pdf
23. U.S. International Trade Commission, "Prestressed Concrete Steel Wire Strand Orders to Remain in Place," 2026, https://www.usitc.gov/press_room/news_release/2026/er0520_68612.htm
24. Federal Highway Administration, "Buy America Questions and Answers," 2026, https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/construction/contracts/buyam_qageneral.cfm
25. One Equity Partners, "One Equity Partners Completes Acquisition of Associated Spring," 2024, https://www.oneequity.com/news/one-equity-partners-completes-acquisition-of-associated-spring/
26. Hendrickson, "Composites," 2026, https://micro.hendrickson-intl.com/composites/about.html
27. Bekaert, Annual Report 2025, 2026, https://www.bekaert.com/content/dam/corporate/investors/ar25/Bekaert%20Annual%20Report%202025%20Document%20%2819%29.pdf
28. Histometrics, "U.S. Spring and Wire Product Manufacturing: Investor Primer — NAICS 33261" (child-industry primer with full detail), 2026.