All Other Industrial Machinery Manufacturing (U.S.) — NAICS 333248

An investor's primer. NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the standard code the U.S. government uses to group businesses.

1. Overview

This industry builds the specialized machines that make things — the injection-molding presses that turn plastic pellets into parts, the extruders that produce film and pipe, the printing presses that print packaging, the textile looms, the chemical- and petroleum-processing equipment, and the newer additive-manufacturing (3D-printing) systems. It is a catch-all "everything else" bucket inside the machinery sector: the equipment here doesn't fit the narrower official categories for farm, construction, food, semiconductor, or paper machinery.[1]

Why an investor should care: these are capital-goods makers. Their fortunes track the capital-spending cycle of the whole manufacturing economy — when factories are busy and confident, they buy machines; when they aren't, orders freeze. That makes the group a cyclical, "picks-and-shovels" way to bet on manufacturing activity, reshoring, and automation, rather than on any single end product.

Ways in differ sharply by route. For public-market investors there are very few clean U.S.-listed pure-plays, and the ones that exist are small, speculative 3D-printing companies. Most of the classic machine-building (plastics, printing, textile, glass) sits inside private-equity-owned firms or foreign-listed European makers. For private investors, this has long been private-equity and family-owned territory — specialist "Mittelstand"-style engineering shops with deep niches. We cover both routes in Section 4 and Section 10.

2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS 333248 covers U.S. establishments making industrial machinery not classified elsewhere. Official illustrative examples include: additive-manufacturing (3D-printing) machinery; plastics-working machinery (injection molders, extruders); rubber-working machinery; printing presses and bookbinding machines; textile-making machinery and sewing machines; chemical-processing machinery; petroleum-refining machinery; glass-making machinery; tannery, shoe-making, and cigarette-making machinery.[1]

Classification history. The present code is relatively new. NAICS 333248 was created in the 2022 revision by combining former NAICS 333244 (Printing Machinery and Equipment Manufacturing) with former NAICS 333249 (Other Industrial Machinery Manufacturing). The latter represented approximately 87–89% of the combined predecessor industries' receipts, firms, and employees, according to the SBA's analysis of the 2017 Economic Census. Historical series that splice the current code to either predecessor without adjustment are therefore unreliable.[2]

What it excludes (and where those live). The catch-all name is misleading — a lot of "industrial machinery" is not here. Adjacent NAICS codes:

• Farm, construction, and mining machinery → industry group 3331[1]
• Food and beverage machinery → 333241[1]
• Semiconductor-making machinery → 333242[1]
• Sawmill, woodworking, and paper machinery → 333243[1]
• Photocopiers and automotive-service equipment → 333310[1]
• Industrial metal molds → 333511; mechanics' hand tools → 332216[1]
• Metal-cutting and metal-forming machine tools (lathes, presses, lasers) sit in a different group (33351x) — a common point of confusion.

The exclusions matter: packaging machinery, industrial robots, and semiconductor tools are often incorrectly included in purported "333248 market" estimates.

Operating model. The category is not a single supply chain or end market. A textile loom, plastics extruder, chemical-processing system, industrial printing press, and metal additive-manufacturing machine share a statistical code but generally do not compete. Even within plastics equipment, injection molding, blow molding, single-screw extrusion, and twin-screw compounding have different vendors and cycles. Production is typically engineering- and assembly-intensive: manufacturers combine fabricated and machined metal, castings, motors, drives, heaters, pumps, controls, sensors, and software into a machine or production line.[3]

Ownership mix. Highly fragmented and specialist. The 2022 Economic Census counted 1,678 firms; the top four accounted for only about 11% of revenue and the top 50 under half.[4] The SBA found that approximately 96.7% of firms in the combined predecessor population would fall below its 750-employee small-business threshold.[2] Ownership skews toward private-equity-controlled platforms and privately held, often family-owned engineering firms, with a thin layer of small public companies (mostly in 3D printing) and diversified public industrials that touch the category. Much of the world's capacity in printing, textile, and plastics machinery sits with European (German, Swiss, Italian) and, increasingly, Chinese manufacturers.

3. How big it is

Federal figures for NAICS 333248 in the United States:

CBP = County Business Patterns (an annual Census dataset); BLS = Bureau of Labor Statistics; SBA = U.S. Small Business Administration. The CBP and BLS employment figures differ because they come from different survey frames and reference periods.

A few derived readings from those figures: average revenue is roughly $9.5 million per firm ($15.9B ÷ 1,678),[4] the average establishment has about 29 workers (51,199 ÷ 1,750),[5] and average pay works out to about $79,000 per employee ($4.03B ÷ 51,199)[5] — solidly middle-income skilled-manufacturing work. BLS payroll data showed 66,200 jobs in April 2026 versus 69,100 in May 2025, a decline of about 4.2%, reflecting the recent softness in industrial capital spending.[6]

The undercount caveat. These statistics count machinery produced by U.S.-based establishments — not the machinery used in U.S. factories. In several of this industry's segments (printing presses, textile and glass machinery, and much plastics equipment), a large share of what American plants buy is imported from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, and China. In 2024, imports of plastics equipment equaled 68.8% of domestic shipments, while mold imports equaled 93%.[8] So domestic-production figures understate the true U.S. market for this equipment. Separately, because "All Other" is a residual bucket, third-party market sizings vary with what they include — private trackers put the U.S. industrial-machinery market far higher, but on a much broader definition than this single code.[9] This is not an industry dominated by government or by tiny sole proprietors — it is real factories — so the usual "gig-worker" undercount does not apply.

4. The investable universe

There is no large, pure U.S.-listed champion for this industry. The publicly traded pure-plays are small additive-manufacturing (AM) companies that have been unprofitable through the recent downturn; broader, steadier exposure comes from diversified industrials that own machine brands, or from foreign-listed European makers.

U.S.-listed companies with meaningful exposure:

Major private and foreign owners (where most of the real capacity sits):

Takeaway: a public investor wanting exposure mostly chooses between speculative small-cap 3D-printing stocks, diversified industrials where this is one slice, or foreign listings; a private investor is buying into PE platforms or family firms.

5. How the money works

Owners here make money the way all capital-equipment builders do — and the economics reward the aftermarket more than the machine sale.

• Two revenue streams. New-machine sales are big-ticket, lumpy, engineered-to-order, and cyclical, and carry only modest gross margins. The aftermarket — spare parts, service, consumables, retrofits, and software — is smaller in dollars but higher-margin and recurring. A large installed base of machines running in customers' plants is an annuity; the goal is to sell the machine, then earn for 15–20 years serving it.
• Backlog and book-to-bill are the vital signs. Because orders are lumpy, investors watch order backlog and the book-to-bill ratio (new orders ÷ machines shipped; above 1.0 means demand is building, below 1.0 means it's shrinking) as leading indicators — often more telling than current-quarter revenue. Backlog quality matters more than headline backlog: cancellation rights, price-escalation clauses, deposits, delivery dates, and remaining engineering content determine its economic value. Hillenbrand's APS segment year-end backlog was $1.52 billion in FY2025, down 9% year-over-year.[10]
• Their customers' capacity utilization drives orders. When factories run near full capacity and confident, they add machines; when utilization sags, capital spending is the first thing frozen. This is the single biggest swing factor.
• Operating leverage cuts both ways. Engineering and plant overhead are largely fixed, so margins expand fast in an upcycle and compress hard in a downturn. Hillenbrand's APS gross margin fell from 35.5% to 34.0% in FY2025 as lower volume and unfavorable mix outweighed pricing and productivity.[10] Working capital is heavy — cash is tied up in long-lead work-in-progress. Customer advances can make cash generation look unusually strong in an order upcycle and reverse when bookings slow.
• Interest rates matter twice — customers often finance equipment purchases, and higher rates raise the hurdle for a new machine to pay for itself.
• The additive-manufacturing subset was pitched on a "razor-and-blades" model (sell the printer, then sell proprietary materials and software subscriptions). In practice recurring-consumable volumes have stayed below hopes, and most AM pure-plays have burned cash rather than compounded it — 3D Systems, for example, posted a $45 million adjusted EBITDA loss in 2025.[13][18]

Margin dispersion. Margins vary too widely to support a single sector benchmark. Nordson's company-wide fiscal 2025 gross margin was 55.2%, reflecting proprietary components, dispensing technology, and substantial recurring parts exposure.[11] Hillenbrand's APS segment ran at 34%.[10] At the other end, 3D Systems reported 33.9% gross margin while posting an operating loss.[13] These are company or segment figures, not NAICS averages.

6. What drives demand

• The industrial capital-spending cycle. Demand is derived from customers' willingness to invest — itself a function of profits, capacity utilization, and confidence.
• Interest rates and financing conditions. Cheaper money pulls equipment purchases forward; tight money defers them.[18]
• Reshoring and new factory construction. A wave of announced U.S. manufacturing investment — roughly $1.66 trillion in private commitments logged since January 2025 by one tracker — is, if it converts to built plants, a multi-year tailwind for machine builders.[19]
• Automation and labor scarcity. Persistent shortages of skilled factory labor push manufacturers to buy machines that raise output per worker — a durable, structural driver.[9] Labor is both a demand driver and a constraint: customers buy automation because operators are scarce, but OEMs themselves require mechanical and controls engineers, machinists, welders, software developers, and field technicians.
• End-market health — and dispersion within segments. Each niche rides its own customers: plastics and packaging machinery on consumer-goods and e-commerce demand; printing presses on packaging and (declining) commercial print; textile, chemical, petroleum, and glass machinery on their respective industries; metal AM on aerospace and defense. Even within one segment, sub-categories diverge: in Q3 2025, North American injection-molding-machine shipments rose 30% sequentially and 4% year-over-year, while single-screw extruders fell 24% year-over-year and twin-screw extruders fell 39% year-over-year — different equipment types in different cycles.[20]
• Technology transitions. Sustainability rules pushing recyclable packaging, vehicle electrification, and defense demand for additively made parts all trigger re-tooling cycles that pull in new equipment. Circularity is a real equipment opportunity in plastics: sorting, washing, shredding, feeding, compounding, and pelletizing recycled material require new or modified systems, and recycled feedstocks often demand more sophisticated process control.
• Printing's mix shift. Printing equipment faces a mix shift rather than a simple decline. Offset and other analog processes face electronic substitution and shrinking long-run work, while digital production, inkjet, wide-format, labels, packaging, and short-run customization require different presses and finishing systems. A 2025 survey of in-plant printers found continued movement toward toner and inkjet production presses, declining offset use, and automation motivated by labor availability.[21]

7. Regulation

This is a lightly licensed but standards-heavy industry — no price regulation, but plenty of safety, trade, and export rules.

• Machine safety and product standards. Equipment must meet U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) workplace-safety rules, including machine-guarding requirements under 29 CFR 1910.212 against point-of-operation, nip-point, rotating-part, and flying-material hazards.[22] Servicing and maintenance are subject to hazardous-energy controls under 29 CFR 1910.147; newly installed or materially modified equipment must accommodate lockout devices.[23] Plastics, rubber, textile, chemical, and metal-processing systems may also need combustible-dust controls.[24] Machines exported to Europe need CE marking. A deficient guard, interlock, emergency stop, or safety-control architecture can create recall, litigation, and reputational exposure.
• Environmental rules. Manufacturing operations can face air-emissions and hazardous-material requirements. EPA's area-source air-toxics standards specifically include industrial machinery and equipment finishing operations among covered metal-fabrication categories.[25] Machine energy use, emissions, and the handling of process chemicals are regulated, but the industry is not subject to the kind of rate or reimbursement regulation seen in utilities or health care.
• Trade policy is the swing variable. Tariffs on imported machinery can protect domestic builders, while tariffs on imported steel, castings, and components (e.g., Section 232 and Section 301 measures) raise their input costs. The net effect varies by firm and is a live source of uncertainty.[8][19]
• Export controls. Advanced additive-manufacturing and other dual-use machinery can fall under U.S. export-control regimes — the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and, for defense-relevant items, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) — and under China-focused technology restrictions. This both limits some sales and creates protected demand in defense (a factor in Velo3D's defense pivot).[15]

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

Extremely fragmented. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard concentration gauge where higher means more concentrated) for this industry is just 65.7 — far below the ~1,500 level antitrust regulators treat as "moderately concentrated." The top four firms hold ~11% of revenue.[4] Competition is really dozens of separate niche contests (injection molders vs. injection molders, press makers vs. press makers), not one market.

Competing on engineering, not price alone. Winners differentiate on machine reliability, throughput, total cost of ownership, energy efficiency, service-network density, and — increasingly — embedded software and automation. Foreign OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), especially German, Swiss, Italian, and Japanese, set the quality bar in many segments, while Chinese builders compete aggressively on price in printing, textile, and commodity plastics machinery.

Import competition is material. The heavy import ratios — plastics equipment imports at 69% of domestic shipments, molds at 93% — demonstrate the importance of European and Asian supply and the potential sensitivity to tariffs and exchange rates.[8]

Consolidation runs on two tracks. In the mature segments, private equity has been the consolidator — Bain Capital's acquisition of operational control of Milacron in March 2025 and Gamut Capital's ownership of Davis-Standard are examples — alongside strategic acquirers like Hillenbrand rolling up plastics-processing brands.[10][16][17] In additive manufacturing, a brutal shakeout followed the 2020–2021 stock bubble: Nano Dimension acquired both Desktop Metal and Markforged in 2025, then Desktop Metal filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy within months and its assets were sold off, and Nano Dimension agreed to sell Markforged to Stratasys for $42.5 million — a fraction of the $116 million it had just paid.[14][26] The AM field is consolidating from many money-losing entrants toward a smaller set of survivors.

9. Risks

• Cyclicality. Big-ticket orders can collapse in a downturn as customers defer capital projects; revenue and margins swing hard. Orders can fall before customer production volumes do, and revenue may continue temporarily as backlog converts, creating delayed operating deleverage.
• Interest-rate sensitivity. High rates suppress equipment financing and lengthen payback periods.[18]
• Import competition and currency. Foreign OEMs and a strong dollar can pressure domestic builders on price and export competitiveness.
• Tariff and input-cost whipsaw. Trade measures can help or hurt depending on whether they hit a firm's outputs or its steel-and-component inputs. Input inflation, tariffs, and component shortages are especially damaging on fixed-price engineered orders.[8][19]
• Heavy working capital and long cash cycles. Cash is tied up in long-lead builds; a stretch of cancelled or delayed orders strains liquidity. Long project lead times create a mismatch when input and wage inflation occurs after an order is priced.
• Secular decline in some niches. Commercial-print and newspaper presses and cigarette-making machinery face shrinking end markets. Environmental policy can accelerate recycling equipment while impairing virgin-plastics or fossil-fuel-related capacity — sometimes within the same vendor.
• Additive-manufacturing-specific risk. The listed AM pure-plays have combined ongoing losses, cash burn, dilution, and — in Velo3D's case — explicit going-concern warnings; the consumables-annuity model has underdelivered, and the sector is still bottoming.[15][18][26]
• Labor constraints on growth. Customers buy automation because operators are scarce, but OEMs themselves require mechanical and controls engineers, machinists, welders, software developers, and field technicians. Service growth can be limited by technician availability, while retirement of experienced application engineers risks losing tacit process knowledge.
• Other operational risks. Rapid controls and software obsolescence, cybersecurity exposure from connected machines, substitution by used or refurbished equipment, customer insourcing, intellectual-property leakage, warranty overruns, and dependence on a few large engineered projects.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public-market routes. Recognize the shortage of pure-plays. The direct-exposure listed names are the small AM companies (3D Systems, Stratasys, Nano Dimension, Velo3D) — high-risk, loss-making, speculative bets on a technology and a cycle turning, not steady compounders. For a steadier proxy, diversified industrials such as Hillenbrand (plastics-processing systems) or Nordson (dispensing/coating) give partial exposure inside a larger, profitable business, as do broad industrial-machinery exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Investors who want the classic printing/packaging machine builders generally have to look to foreign listings such as Koenig & Bauer (Germany) or Bobst (Switzerland). Public investors must build exposure product by product rather than screen on a company-level NAICS label.[10][11][12][13][17]

Private-market routes. This is where most of the industry actually trades hands. Private equity has been the dominant owner and consolidator of specialist machine builders (Milacron, Davis-Standard), and many strong niche firms — especially in Europe — remain family-owned and only accessible through direct acquisition or private transactions.[10][16][17] Targets include niche OEMs, controls and retrofit specialists, regional distributors, field-service organizations, proprietary replacement-parts businesses, and systems integrators. Distressed situations also surface: the sale of Desktop Metal's assets out of bankruptcy is a recent example of buying capability at a discount after the AM bubble deflated.[26]

Near-term outlook (a forward-looking judgment, not a reported fact). The setup is mixed. Supporting demand: the reshoring/new-factory investment wave, structural automation and labor-scarcity pressure, and defense/aerospace pull for metal additive parts.[9][19] Working against it: soft industrial capital spending and still-elevated interest rates through 2025, tariff uncertainty, and an additive-manufacturing sector that is still consolidating, with industrial-system shipments down and a fuller recovery widely expected to begin as rates ease into 2026.[18] Net: a cyclical, engineering-driven industry with a credible multi-year reshoring/automation tailwind, but one where public investors face a thin, mostly speculative menu and are often better served by diversified or private exposure than by the pure-plays.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau / NAICS Association. "NAICS Code 333248 — All Other Industrial Machinery Manufacturing (2022)." 2022. https://www.naics.com/naics-code-description/?v=2022&code=333248 (definition and cross-references per U.S. Census Bureau NAICS 2022, https://www.census.gov/naics/).
2. U.S. Small Business Administration / Federal Register. "Small Business Size Standards: Revision of Monetary Based Size Standards" (NAICS 333248 created by combining 333244 and 333249; 87–89% from 333249; 96.7% below 750 employees). July 2022. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2022-07-05/pdf/2022-13250.pdf
3. U.S. Census Bureau. "NAICS 333 — Machinery Manufacturing" (production process description). 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=333&input=333&year=2022
4. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 Economic Census — Concentration by Largest Firms, NAICS 333248" (firm count 1,678; value of shipments ~$15.9 billion; concentration ratios; HHI 65.7). 2022. https://data.census.gov/
5. U.S. Census Bureau. "County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 333248" (establishments 1,750; employment 51,199; annual payroll ~$4.03 billion). 2023. https://data.census.gov/
6. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Table B-1b. Employees on nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail, seasonally adjusted" (NAICS 333248: 66,200 April 2026; 69,100 May 2025). 2026. https://www.bls.gov/ces/data/employment-and-earnings/2026/table1b_202605.htm
7. U.S. Small Business Administration. "Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 333248 = 750 employees)." 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
8. Plastics Industry Association. "Tariffs and the U.S. Plastics Industry Supply Chain" (2024 imports: plastics equipment 68.8% of domestic shipments; molds 93%). 2025. https://www.plasticsindustry.org/blog/tariffs-and-the-u-s-plastics-industry-supply-chain-where-do-we-stand/
9. GMInsights. "Industrial Machinery Market Size, Share Report." 2025. https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/industrial-machinery-market
10. Hillenbrand, Inc. "2025 Form 10-K" (APS segment FY2025: $2.069B revenue, 34.0% gross margin, $1.522B backlog; Milacron 49% stake; Bain Capital 51%). 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1417398/000162828025053207/hi-20250930.htm
11. Nordson Corporation. "2025 Form 10-K" (FY2025 revenue ~$2.7B; 55.2% gross margin). 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/72331/000007233125000144/ndsn-20251031.htm
12. Stratasys Ltd. "Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results" (FY2025 revenue ~$551M). 2026. https://investors.stratasys.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/975/stratasys-releases-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025
13. 3D Systems Corporation. "Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results" (FY2025 revenue $386.9M; 33.9% gross margin; $(45.4)M adjusted EBITDA). 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/910638/000162828026015798/a3d2025-12x31earningsrelea.htm
14. 3DPrint.com / VoxelMatters. "Nano Dimension's Acquisition of Desktop Metal and Markforged" (combined revenue $200M+; Markforged $116M purchase). 2025. https://www.voxelmatters.com/stratasys-acquires-markforged-from-nano-dimension-for-42-5-million/
15. VoxelMatters. "Velo3D posts $13.6 million in Q3 2025 revenue following Nasdaq uplisting" (FY2025 guide $50–60M; going-concern doubt; defense contract). 2025. https://www.voxelmatters.com/velo3d-posts-13-6-million-in-q3-2025-revenue-following-nasdaq-uplisting/
16. Milacron / Hillenbrand. "Bain Capital Completes Majority Investment in Milacron" (Bain ~51%, Hillenbrand 49%; March 2025). 2025. https://www.milacron.com/press-release/bain-capital-completes-majority-investment-in-milacron-a-leading-global-provider-of-highly-engineered-plastic-processing-solutions/ and https://hillenbrand.com/corporate-news/hillenbrand-completes-sale-of-majority-stake-in-milacron-injection-molding-and-extrusion-business/
17. Inven / PitchBook. "Top Printing Machinery Companies" and "Davis-Standard Company Profile" (Koenig & Bauer, Bobst, Reifenhäuser, Davis-Standard/Gamut Capital). 2026. https://www.inven.ai/company-lists/top-24-printing-machinery-companies https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/10822-33
18. TCT Magazine / CONTEXT. "CONTEXT reports 'tough year' for AM industry with declines in 3D printer shipments in Q4 2024" (industrial-system shipments down; recovery expected 2026). 2025. https://www.tctmagazine.com/context-figures-q4-2024-tough-year-am-3d-printer-shipments-down/
19. IoT Analytics. "US manufacturing reshoring boom: What the data says one year after 'Liberation Day' tariffs" (~$1.66 trillion announced commitments since January 2025). 2026. https://iot-analytics.com/us-manufacturing-reshoring-boom-what-the-data-says/
20. Plastics Industry Association. "2025 Q3 Committee on Equipment Statistics Report" (injection molding +30% sequential, +4.2% YoY; single-screw extruders −24.2% YoY; twin-screw −38.6% YoY). 2025. https://www.plasticsindustry.org/newsroom/plastics-industry-association-releases-2025-q3-committee-on-equipment-statistics-report/
21. PRINTING United Alliance. "In-Plant Equipment Investment Trends 2025" (movement toward toner/inkjet, declining offset, labor-driven automation). 2025. https://www.printing.org/docs/default-source/research-docs---public/in-plant_equipment_investment_trends_2025.pdf
22. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. "29 CFR 1910.212 — General Requirements for All Machines" (machine guarding). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.212
23. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. "29 CFR 1910.147 — The Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout)." https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.147
24. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. "Combustible Dust in Industry: Preventing and Mitigating the Effects of Fire and Explosions." https://www.osha.gov/publications/3371combustible-dust
25. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Metal Fabrication and Finishing Source Categories: National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants." https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/metal-fabrication-and-finishing-source-categories-national
26. 3D Printing Industry. "Nano Dimension Takes Substantial Loss on Sale of Markforged to Stratasys" and Desktop Metal Chapter 11 coverage ($42.5M Markforged sale; Desktop Metal bankruptcy and asset sale). 2025–2026. https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/nano-dimension-takes-substantial-loss-on-sale-of-markforged-to-stratasys-251862/