This week's Plastics News has our annual ranking of North American rotational molders. Here is a look behind the data.
This year we're ranking 122 firms, with rotational molding sales of $2.36 billion. That is higher than last year's total by just under 1 percent.
It is interesting to examine the annual totals over the last few years. $71 million was added for the 2014 fiscal year and $17 million for fiscal 2016, still growing but at a slower pace. The average sales per firm is also still growing, $18.5 million then compared to $19.3 million now.
For those firms reporting sales growth, the average increase was 23 percent, but with a wide range of 3 to 100 percent.
Most notable in this year's listing are the acquisitions, both for private equity and consolidation. In fact, 8 percent of our ranked firms reported some type of sale during 2016.
We said goodbye to Englehart Moulding Corp., which stopped production mid-2016 so that Rick Englehart could retire, and hello to Simplay3 Co. of Streetsboro, Ohio, so that Tom Murdough could unretire.