NAICS 32616Industry · 5-digitregional market

Plastic bottle manufacturing

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in blow moulding or casting plastic bottles. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 64
Under 10 employeesA: 17%
Establishments · USA: 472
Employment · USA: 37,743
Payroll · USA: $2.2B

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

1–4813%

5–935%

10–191320%

20–492031%

50–991523%

100–19935%

200–49923%

500+0—

Of 64 Canadian establishments with employees, 17% have fewer than ten — weighted toward mid-sized establishments.

Where they areA

Ontario3250%

Quebec1523%

British Columbia914%

Alberta46%

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 326, 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.

regional competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 326 Plastics and rubber products manufacturing

Custom moulding and extrusion is a job-shop business where tooling and customer concentration are the real risks; most shops depend on a handful of accounts.

Who sets the price: OEM customers, through annual price-down contracts.
The software it runs on: Job-shop and moulding ERP, tooling and quality tracking.

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 3261 Plastic product manufacturing covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 3261

Plastic Film & Packaging Extrusion PlantStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

The atlas already screens the injection-moulding job shop under 326, where the customer owns the tool. This record takes the other half of the group — film, sheet, bags, bottles and pipe, where the line is yours and the product is closer to a commodity. It is a big, working industry: 1,811 Canadian establishments, and unlike most of manufacturing the weight is in the middle — 29% have fifty or more employees [A], which is the first sign of what it takes. Winpak, the Winnipeg packaging-film and rigid-container maker, is the clean Canadian anchor. In 2025 it reported revenue of $1,125.4M, down 0.5%, with volumes down 1.0%, and $84.9M of property, plant and equipment additions [A] — about 7.5% of revenue, reinvested in a year when volume shrank. Its gross margin still slipped 1.6 points to 30.4%, and not because resin outran price: pricing added $3.4M to earnings and everything else took $14.9M back, on production waste, quality problems and output too low to carry the plant [A]. It guides to another $80–100M for 2026. That is the mechanism: an extrusion line earns a conversion spread over resin, the spread only covers the machine if the line runs around the clock, and staying qualified with food and medical customers means buying the next generation of line whether or not the market grew. Winpak's one weak product says what happens otherwise — biaxially oriented nylon volumes fell 14% on competitive pricing pressure [A]. An entrant with one or two used lines is the marginal producer in that fight, buying resin in truckloads against railcar buyers. A full study would look instead at buying an existing niche converter with customer approvals already in hand.

NAICS 32616 vendors named12 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 326 Plastics and rubber products manufacturing

Plastics Injection Moulding Job ShopStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

A press, a mould and a validated process precede any revenue, and the mould is usually the customer's — which means the customer can move the work by moving a tool. That single fact caps the defensibility of the whole business, and there is a filing that measures it. Core Molding Technologies, a listed custom moulder, discloses that Volvo fell from 14% of its sales in 2024 to 4% in 2025 because programmes it supplied transitioned to programmes it does not, a transition the company says runs from the second half of 2024 through 2026 [A]; its five largest customers were 65% of 2025 sales, and the same five were 69% the year before [A]. That is the shape of a job shop many times larger than anything an entrant would build. The same filings show where the cash goes: Core Molding's product sales fell 20.2% in 2025 while total net sales fell only 9.5%, because US$41.6M of tooling revenue — customers paying for moulds — filled the gap against US$11.3M the year before [A]. Tooling is one-time work billed at a thin margin; the parts revenue behind it is what recurs, and it shrank by a fifth. Tooling, cleanroom and certification costs put entry in the high six figures before a first part ships, and what that money buys is a press, not a customer. The consolidators are not bidding at that end either: ABC Technologies of Toronto, majority owned by Apollo funds, completed the purchase of TI Fluid Systems in April 2025 at an enterprise value of over £1.8 billion, forming a US$5.4B, 34,600-employee tier one [A]. That buys a platform, not a job shop. 1,037 of Canada's 2,065 establishments have fewer than twenty employees [A], and those are the shops an entrant would actually be bidding against — for the same tool package, inside the same freight radius, with the same customer holding the drawing.

NAICS 3265 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: Job-shop and moulding ERP, tooling and quality tracking.

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

1 row sits directly beneath 32616. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
326160	Plastic bottle manufacturing	64	screened at 3261

Alongside it, under 3261 Plastic product manufacturing

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
32611	Plastic packaging materials and unlaminated film and sheet manufacturing	230	screened at 3261
32612	Plastic pipe, pipe fitting, and unlaminated profile shape manufacturing	131	screened at 3261
32613	Laminated plastic plate, sheet (except packaging), and shape manufacturing	28	screened at 3261
32614	Polystyrene foam product manufacturing	85	screened at 3261
32615	Urethane and other foam product (except polystyrene) manufacturing	79	screened at 3261
32619	Other plastic product manufacturing	1,194	screened at 3261