Acquisitions impacting the film and sheet market

This week Plastics News publishes its annual ranking of North American film and sheet manufacturers. Let's take a look at the numbers behind the report.

There are 172 firms ranked this year with sales of $35 billion, adding over $600 million to the market vs. a year earlier.

The 2016 average sales per company is $203.6 million, which is 4.7 percent higher than 2015. But statistics can be funny. Although 30 percent of the listed companies did have growth, there are a fewer firms listed this year due to acquisitions.

In fact, there are 17 mergers and acquisitions plus two more pending noted within the ranking. Adjusting for those consolidations put organic growth average sales per company at just 1.2 percent.

It can be a challenge to sort through the ranking for performance information. While this ranking is designed to reflect sales from the manufacture, extrusion and calendering of film and sheet, figures for some companies include sales from conversion of products not actually made in-house. This makes it a mixed bag, but we can still pull out some trends:

High volume packaging is greatly affected by resin pricing, Polypropylene had the largest increase in price per pound at 6.2 percent. Nylon and polycarbonate had the biggest decline at just over 21 percent. Sales were up and down with respect to pricing passed through to customers.

About 20 percent of the listed firms are publicly traded or have public parent companies. These annual reports give us some insight into processors. Over the course of publishing all our 2016 fiscal year rankings to date, resin pricing and foreign exchange rates have had the biggest common impact.

Film sales were $28.4 billion, up 2.4 percent. Sheet sales remained constant at $6.7 million.

Moving into the No. 1 position is Berry Global Inc. as the largest ranked film maker, thanks primarily to its purchase of AEP Industries Inc.

This year we say hello to Transcontinental Inc. whose film packaging business is made up of the acquisitions of Ultra Flex Packaging Corp., Robbie Mfg, , Capri Packaging and most recently Flexstar Packaging Inc.

Cortec Corp. a specialty polyethylene films manufacturer in St. Paul, Minn.

TC Transcontinental Packaging, a flexible packaging supplier in Vaughan, Ontario.

TRM Manufacturing, a maker of polyethylene products in Corona, Calif.

Here are the top movers: These firms have moved up the most positions in the ranking:

Layfield Flexible Packaging of Richmond, British Columbia, moved up 60 spaces to rank at No. 44.

Plastic Suppliers Inc. of Columbus, Ohio, moved up 25 spaces to rank at No. 70.

Donarra Extrusions LLC of Ocala, Fla., moved up seven spaces to rank at No. 167.

Packaging Materials Inc. of Cambridge, Ohio, moved up seven spaces to rank at No. 157.

Film-Pak Inc. of Crowley, Texas, moved up 6 spaces to rank at No. 166.

Elite Extrusion Technology Inc. of St. Charles, Ill., moved up four spaces to rank at No. 128.

Altopro SA de CV of Mexico City moved up four spaces to rank at No. 128.

Simona America Inc. of Archbald, Pa., moved up four spaces to rank at No. 6.

Wiman Corp. of Sauk Rapids, Minn., moved up three spaces to rank at No. 126.

Nan Ya Plastics Corp. USA of Livingston, N.J., moved up two spaces to rank at No. 39.

Be sure to check out the full report in the Sept. 18, 2017, print issue of Plastics News.

You can find the complete listings online at www.plasticsnews.com/rankings/film-sheet.

This ranking and all the Plastics News rankings & lists can be purchased in our data store at www.plasticsnews.com/section/store.

If you work for a company that is missing from the ranking, we would like to include you next time. Just send a note to Hollee Keller at [email protected] or mail your information to Plastics News, P.O. Box 790, Tallmadge, Ohio 44278.

Thanks to Hollee Keller, for this peek behind the rankings data. Follow her on Twitter @holleekeller.