Behind our latest ranking: Industrial blow molding outpaces bottle sector

This week Plastics News published its annual ranking of North American blow molders, and it looks like 2014 was a good year to be an industrial blow molder.

Here is a peek behind some of the numbers:

This year we rank 130 firms, with $18.2 billion in 2014 North American blow molding sales. That's an average of $140.3 million per company, up 1.7 percent overall.

The average sales per company in the industrial blow molding sector outperformed the average, with 2.7 percent growth. This continues an upward trend in recent years.

Custom molders serving industrial markets saw the most growth, up an average of 15 percent. As expected, the larger automotive molders also saw increases in sales, averaging 6 percent increases.

Contract bottle makers and smaller, more diverse, firms had a more challenging year.

My first reaction when seeing these trends was that the difference was materials related. After all, resin prices are down, so it makes sense that bottle blow molders reported lower sales, since they typically pass resin price increases and decreases to their customers. But, thanks to analysis from Hollee Keller, our editorial research coordinator, I realize now that's not true. In 2014, PET bottle resin prices fell just a bit over 1 percent, while polyethylene resin costs actually increased last year, by 9.7 percent.

Lots of M&A

There was a lot of activity in this sector of the industry. The ranking has seven footnotes on acquisitions. What's more, Plastics News covered more than 90 news stories about changes in ownership, acquisitions, joint ventures, relocations and equipment purchases in 2014 alone.

Welcome to the ranking

The following firms are new to our listing this year:

• Agri-Industrial Plastics Co. of Fairfield, Iowa, a large scale parts maker.

• Container Services Inc. of Hillsboro, Kan., a melt stretch custom container manufacturer.

• Port Erie Plastics Inc. of Harborcreek, Pa., a custom blow molder.

• Quality Blow Molding Inc. of Elyria, Ohio, a maker of high-end containers.

Fastest growth

Here is a list of the top growing companies in our ranking this year:

• Bomatic Inc. of Temecula, Calif., moving up 23 spaces to rank at No. 69.

• Western Case Inc. of Riverside, Calif., moving up 18 spaces to rank at No. 87.

• Carr Management Inc. of Nashua, N.H., moving up 17 spaces to rank at No. 32.

• Confer Plastics Inc. of North Tonawanda, N.Y., moving up 6 spaces to rank at No. 51.

• Penguin LLC of Sturgis, Mich., moving up six spaces to rank at No. 35.

• Prime Products Inc. of Schulenburg, Texas, moving up six spaces to rank at No. 69.

• Suscon Inc. of Williamsport, Pa., moving up six spaces to rank at No 77.

Make sure to check out the full report in the Nov. 2 print edition of Plastics News. You can view each firm online at www.plasticsnews.com/rankings/blow-molders and we sell our full ranking data in the PN store, www.plasticsnews.com.data.

If your firm is missing from the ranking and you would like to participate, drop an email to [email protected] or find the online survey form at www.plasticsnews.com/section/ranking-surveys.

And thanks to Hollee Keller, PN's editorial research coordinator, for this peek behind the rankings data.