It's time again for our annual ranking of North American rotational molders. This year's class includes 106 companies with $3.08 billion in combined sales. That's down 1.5 percent over last year's ranking.
The brunt of the decline came from the outdoor recreation and industrial application end markets. Lower resin pricing has a larger impact on commodity items, so custom molders came in as a mixed bag of results, depending on the product. Tanks and containers were hit hardest. For our listing, that includes 18 and 10 percent of the companies, respectively.
For each of our six processor rankings, there is a gap between the biggest and the cutoff cliff for determining peers by size. For this ranking, rotational molding makes up 2 percent of our total sales tracked but carries the largest gap between company sizes.
Tank Holding Corp. of Lincoln, Neb., comes in at No. 1 with an estimated $655 million in related sales, while Den Hartog Industries Inc. of Hospers, Iowa, ranks at No. 8 with $69.6 million. Both are in the top 10, and both make tanks. However, the top spot is 9.4 times larger than No. 8.
This divide makes it difficult to compare averages. That's why I've broken them off at the top 7. The average sales per company for these kings is $246.5 million, while the average for the remaining firms is $13.7 million. The chart beside shows that by comparison.
