A peek behind the data in our 2019 ranking of North American blow molders

This week, Plastics News publishes its annual ranking of North American blow molders. Here is a peek behind the data in this year's ranking.

Our Nov. 11 issue has the top 100 in print. The full data for all 123 companies can be found online.

Our 123 firms represent $18.8 billion in sales, up 4 percent over last year. The average sales per company is $152.5 million, up 5.7 percent over last year. The breakout has 76 percent, or $1.4 billion, in bottle sales and 24 percent in industrial blow molding sales.

Watching for tends did not yield any business patterns for growth among our firms, although about half did self-report increases of about 13.5 percent, on average. The other half mostly reported no change.

The top resin grades were a mixed lot in pricing for the 2018 fiscal year with polyethylene down 11 percent and polypropylene, PET and PVC all up 16, 12, 6.6 percent, respectively.

The top end markets were industrial/agricultural chemicals, other food, medical/pharmaceutical and household chemicals.

This year is our 30th anniversary, and back in 1992 we had our very first blow molders ranking. The very first No. 1 industrial blow molder was ABC Group of Toronto with $116.1 million in related sales. It comes in at No. 14 in the current ranking.

The first No. 1 bottle blow molder was Constar International Inc. of Chattanooga, Tenn. with an estimated $445 million in sales, now part of Plastipak Packaging Inc. of Plymouth, Mich. which comes in at No. 3 this week.

Plastics Group , a maker of gas cans and fuel tanks. Beaconhouse Capital Management LLC acquired the Willowbrook, Ill., operations of The Plastics Group Inc.

Welcome also to custom molder Hi-Rel Plastics & Molding Inc. of Riverside, Calif.

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

Precision Plastics Packaging Co., of Anaheim, Calif., moved up 34 spaces to rank at No. 48.

Hub Plastics Inc., of Blacklick, Ohio, moved up 15 spaces to rank at No. 63.

Den Hartog Industries Inc., of Hospers, Iowa, moved up nine spaces to rank at No. 102.

Aaron Packaging Inc., of Sumner, Wash., moved up nine spaces to rank at No. 100.

Lefko Plastic Products Inc., of Magog, Quebec, moved up five spaces to rank at No. 64.

Poly-Tainer Inc., of Simi Valley, Calif., moved up five spaces to rank at No. 38.

Container Services Inc., of Hillsboro, Kan., moved up five spaces to rank at No. 65.

Falcon Plastics Inc., of Brookings, S.D., moved up four spaces to rank at No. 106.

Yoshino America Corp., of University Park, Ill., moved up four spaces to rank at No. 42.

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.

We sell our full ranking data in the PN store: www.plasticsnews.com.data