NAICS 325120Canadian industry · 6-digitnational market

Industrial gas manufacturing

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing industrial organic and inorganic gases in compressed, liquid and solid forms. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 73
Under 10 employeesA: 59%
Establishments · USA: 657
Employment · USA: 15,143
Payroll · USA: $1.3B

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

1–42636%

5–91723%

10–191521%

20–491318%

50–9911%

100–19911%

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 73 Canadian establishments with employees, 59% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario1926%

Alberta1926%

Quebec1825%

British Columbia57%

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 325, 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 325 Chemical manufacturing

Basic chemicals need plant-scale capital. Formulated products — cleaners, coatings, cosmetics — are reachable through contract manufacture, which moves the problem to distribution.

Who sets the price: Commodity markets for basic chemicals; brands and retailers for formulated goods.
The software it runs on: Process ERP, formulation, safety-data and regulatory compliance.

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 3251 Basic chemical manufacturing covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 3251

Basic Chemical PlantStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

Unlike most of heavy manufacturing in this research, basic chemicals can be a very good business for the people already in it. Chemtrade — sulphuric acid, water-treatment chemicals, chlor-alkali and sodium chlorate, made at plants across Canada and the US — reported record 2025 revenue of C$1,997.8M, up 11.8%, and record adjusted EBITDA of C$507.4M, roughly a quarter of sales [A]. Demand is dull and durable: municipalities must treat water, pulp mills and refiners must buy acid. So the pre-screen's cut is tested against a healthy incumbent, not a sick one, and it holds — for a specific reason. Everything that produces that margin is sunk and permitted long before a tonne is sold: an acid or chlor-alkali plant, its environmental approvals, rail cars and terminals for hazardous goods, and customers on multi-year supply contracts. Even maintenance is plant-scale — the biennial turnaround of one facility, North Vancouver, cost Chemtrade about C$17.9M of EBITDA in 2024 [A]. The incumbent itself does not build to grow; it spent US$180M in 2025 buying Polytec and Thatcher assets [A]. At the petrochemical end the numbers leave ordinary scale entirely: Dow expects capital spending on its Fort Saskatchewan ethylene and derivatives complex to run at about US$1.5B a year through 2030, and Dow, with every advantage, delayed the project two years in 2025 while cutting its capital budget [A]. The establishment count looks more open than this — 188 of 322 have fewer than twenty employees [A] — but those are mostly gas fill plants, blending sites and small specialty units attached to larger networks; this screen did not examine them individually and does not claim none is enterable.

NAICS 32515 vendors named12 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.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Process ERP, formulation, safety-data and regulatory compliance.

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 →