Our sales-based ranking of North American rotational molders includes some changes.
What won't be evident is the major consolidation among tank rotomolders. Private equity firm Olympus Partners launched a major roll-up of tank makers in 2008 by gobbling up the two biggest players, Snyder Industries Inc. and Norwesco Inc.
Last year, Olympus opened the purse strings again with two more tank-related acquisitions: The tank
manufacturing division of Rotonics Manufacturing Inc., and Promens hf's six U.S. rotomolding plants. (A management group later bought five of the six Promens factories, leaving Olympus with one. See the Page 1 profile on Indiana Rotomolding). Those operations have been folded into Snyder and Norwesco.
If you add it all up, that would make Olympus by far the largest North American rotomolder, with sales of about $240 million — about $100 million more than Step2 or Toter. But you won't find that in the ranking.
Why not? We are listing Snyder and Norwesco as separate companies, even though Olympus owns both. Our reasoning is that they remain independent businesses, with their own veteran management teams. Listing them separately gives readers more detail.
While it's likely that common ownership gives them greater clout when buying resin, it would make no sense to list “Olympus Partners” as a single rotomolder.
This year we are including footnotes spelling out the Olympus angle for Snyder, Norwesco and Rotonics.
Bregar is an Akron-based senior reporter for Plastics News.
