This week our annual ranking of North American blow molders swoops in on a puff of air to the beat of an industrial drum.
Was that too big a stretch? OK then, here is a look at the numbers behind this years' report: Some 116 companies are ranked with total North American blow molding sales of $20.7 billion. This represents an 11 percent year-over-year gain. While 80 percent of the total is made up from bottles, they didn't take top billing in gains. Industrial blow molders — as in not bottles — saw a 25 percent gain on average. Bottle blow molders reported sales growth of 20 percent.
That number — 20 percent — also pops up when I research prices for the top resins used in blow molding. According to our data, and noted in some of the publicly traded company's annual reports, there was an initial lag in passing those costs along to customers. As a result, there is a close relationship between sales gains and resin pricing this year.
But that isn't the full story. To highlight how weighty large volumes are, I looked at the difference for each top 10 — bottles and industrial — in both actual sales and percentage increases. Here is what I found: a sales gain of 13 percent for the top 10 bottle molders, while industrial molders saw a gain of 28 percent. Quite a story, considering the bottle gain in actual dollars was five times greater.
On the acquisition side, in the top 10, we noted Pretium Packaging LLC's purchase of Alpha Packaging Inc. last year, but it did make another purchase — Grupo Edid — in December 2021. More recently, Altium Packaging LLC acquired Plastic Industries Inc. and Andersen Plastics.
In addition, No. 21, Vpet USA LLC acquired Canyon Plastics Inc. and is opening a new location in Greer, S.C. The No. 54 company, Precision Concepts International LLC, acquired C&G Packaging LLC in June.
The top movers in our ranking this year:
• Plasticraft Corp. in Darien, Wis., moved up 22 spaces to rank at No. 76.
• Precision Concepts International LLC in Calgary, Alberta, moved up 12 spaces to rank at No. 54.
• Blow Molded Specialties Inc. Midwest in Foley, Minn., moved up nine spaces to rank at No. 45.
• Microdyne Plastics Inc. in Colton, Calif., moved up eight spaces to rank at No. 81.
• Western Industries Plastic Products LLC in Winfield, Kan., moved up seven spaces to rank at No. 36.
• Den Hartog Industries Inc. in Hospers, Iowa, moved up seven spaces to rank at No. 97.
• Steere Enterprises Inc. in Tallmadge, Ohio, moved up six spaces to rank at No. 32.
Congratulations also to Angela Breitbach of No. 25, Radius Packaging Inc. She was the winner of our 2022 Plastics News Chief Financial Officer of the Year award.
You can find the complete listings online at www.plasticsnews.com/blow-molders.
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.
Keller is editorial research coordinator for Plastics News and author of the All Things Data blog. Follow her on Twitter @holleekeller.