NAICS 31121Industry · 5-digitnational market

Flour milling and malt manufacturing

SoftwareDigital Shelf & Product Content Software 311 · Food Safety & Traceability Software 311

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in grinding grains or vegetables; milling, cleaning and polishing rice; or manufacturing malt. Integrated mills, which grind grain and further process the milling products into such products as prepared flour mixes or doughs, are included. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 92
Under 10 employeesA: 42%
Establishments · USA: 476
Employment · USA: 21,988
Payroll · USA: $1.4B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–42224%

5–91718%

10–1989%

20–492729%

50–991718%

100–19911%

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 92 Canadian establishments with employees, 42% have fewer than ten — weighted toward mid-sized establishments.

Where they areA

Ontario2729%

Quebec2325%

British Columbia1314%

Saskatchewan1011%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Manufacturing, US · opened 2020

86.2%

1 year

70.8%

3 years

58.4%

5 years

45.3%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 311, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

national competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 311 Food manufacturing

Inspected facilities and a handful of buyers with listing fees. The reachable end is small-batch and regional, where the product can carry a premium the commodity line cannot.

Who sets the price: Grocery retailers, a concentrated buyer in Canada.
The software it runs on: Food-safety, traceability, recipe and batch ERP.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 3112 Grain and oilseed milling covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 3112

Oilseed Crushing & Flour Milling PlantStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

This is a growing industry, which is not what the pre-screen's "commodity margins" suggests. Statistics Canada reports that Canadian processors crushed a record 11.6 million tonnes of canola in 2025, up 1.6% and the third consecutive annual record, and that domestic crushers took 50.5% of all canola disposition in the 2024/25 crop year against 41.5% exported as seed [A]. More of the crop is now processed where it is grown than leaves the country as seed. The cut is the size of the ticket to take part. When Cargill announced its Regina crush plant it was reported as a $350M facility with one million tonnes of annual capacity [B] — at least $350 of plant for every tonne of yearly throughput, before a tonne of seed is bought. And the plant, once built, sets no price: seed is bought against a futures market, oil and meal are sold against theirs, and the crusher earns the spread the board leaves. That rewards the lowest-cost, best-located, largest plant with its own rail and origination, which is why the builders are global grain houses. Flour milling, wet corn milling and breakfast cereal share the shape: US establishments in this group average 63 employees [A]. The 84 Canadian establishments with fewer than ten employees [A] are stone mills and cold-press oil makers. What they sell is a premium bag of flour or bottle of oil, and that is a packaged-goods brand — screened at 311 — that happens to own a mill.

NAICS 31126 vendors named9 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 311 Food manufacturing

Consumer Packaged Goods Brand OperationStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

Shelf space is bought, not won. A new CPG brand pays slotting fees, funds trade promotions, carries the retailer's payment terms and absorbs returns before it learns whether the product sells, and co-manufacturing minimums put the first production run in the tens of thousands of units. The direct-to-consumer route that was supposed to bypass all of that now costs more in paid acquisition than the margin on a grocery-priced item supports. The product content software this industry buys is screened separately at the same code.

NAICS 3115 vendors named10 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 311 Food manufacturing

Digital Shelf & Product Content SoftwareStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

Incumbent Salsify and Syndigo

The product is a retailer integration map, and it takes years and a partner team to build. Salsify raised about $200M at a $2B valuation on the strength of syndicating content to more than 1,000 retailers for brands including P&G, Coca-Cola, Mars and Kraft Heinz; Syndigo holds the other half of the same network. A new entrant must rebuild those connections one retailer at a time while each retailer keeps changing its content requirements — the same moat the EDI record at 419 describes, in a different format.

NAICS 3114 vendors named3 sourced figuresOpen →

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 311 Food manufacturing

Food Safety & Traceability SoftwareExecution decides

binding constraint: distribution

Incumbent Trustwell (FoodLogiQ + Genesis) and TraceGains

FSMA 204 gives the category a dated regulatory trigger, which is the strongest demand signal in this batch — but the buyer is reached through GFSI certifying bodies and third-party auditors, not through search or self-serve. That channel is owned by the auditors and by the incumbents who sponsor them, and an entrant with no audit relationship has no route in. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 3114 vendors namedOpen →

Catalogued categories — named, not analysed

Discrete manufacturing ERP SaaS 31-33

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Manufacturing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Aircraft assemblers and aircraft assembly inspectors One industry 91.3%

Supervisors, assembly and fabrication One industry 88.3%

Machine operators and related workers in pulp and paper production and wood processing and manufacturing One industry 86.1%

Managers in manufacturing and utilities One industry 84.4%

Machine operators and related workers in chemical, plastic and rubber processing One industry 82.7%

Mechanical, electrical and electronics assemblers and inspectors One industry 82.3%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 79.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 77.7%

Furniture, wood, plastic and other products assemblers, finishers and inspectors One industry 73.9%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 70.8%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 20%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 16.3%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 15.2%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 11.6%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 10.7%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 9.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 9.2%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 8.3%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 7.7%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4.8%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

2 rows sit directly beneath 31121. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
311211	Flour milling	73	screened at 3112
311214	Rice milling and malt manufacturing	19	screened at 3112

Alongside it, under 3112 Grain and oilseed milling

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
31122	Starch and vegetable fat and oil manufacturing	74	screened at 3112
31123	Breakfast cereal manufacturing	31	screened at 3112