NAICS 332311Canadian industry · 6-digitregional market

Prefabricated metal building and component manufacturing

SoftwareJob Shop & Metal Fabrication ERP 332

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing prefabricated and pre-engineered metal buildings. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 199
Under 10 employeesA: 38%
Establishments · USA: 799
Employment · USA: 28,109
Payroll · USA: $1.9B

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

1–44020%

5–93618%

10–193719%

20–495025%

50–992010%

100–199126%

200–49942%

500+0—

Of 199 Canadian establishments with employees, 38% have fewer than ten — weighted toward mid-sized establishments.

Where they areA

Ontario5528%

Quebec5327%

Alberta3317%

British Columbia2814%

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 332, 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 332 Fabricated metal product manufacturing

The classic machine and fabrication shop: reachable by acquisition from a retiring owner, limited by machine hours and skilled labour, and exposed to a few large customers.

Who sets the price: The customer's drawing and a competitive quote.
The software it runs on: Job-shop ERP, quoting, scheduling, CAD/CAM.

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 3323 Architectural and structural metals manufacturing covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 3323

Structural Steel Fabrication ShopOne thing must be true

binding constraint: growth quality

The pre-screen marked this a candidate, and the screen did not overturn that — this record does not find a clean kill, and says so. It is filed with the cut that came closest. What is attractive is real. This is a broad trade, not an oligopoly: 2,373 Canadian establishments, 42% with fewer than ten employees and another 42% with ten to forty-nine [A], led by Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta. The shops are certified, equipment-rich and owner-run, which is the profile that sells to a successor. And the top of the industry earns real money: ADF Group, a Quebec fabricator of complex structures, reported a 31.6% gross margin on C$339.6M of revenue in fiscal 2025, and when Canam Group was taken private in 2017 the buyers paid C$12.30 a share, a 98.4% premium, for an enterprise value of about C$875M [A]. Informed money has valued this trade highly. The cut that came closest is the quality of the revenue. ADF's next year shows it: revenue fell 24% to C$258.7M, gross margin to 23.1% and net income from C$56.8M to C$26.3M, with the Terrebonne plant on a work-sharing programme, and the company blames US tariffs and the steel price set by US mills [A] — while its backlog reached a record C$561.1M. Work arrives as discrete projects, each won by bid, often at a fixed price struck before the steel is bought; a full order book and an idle shop can coexist for a year. For a small shop the same lumpiness runs through two or three general contractors. A full study should test, for a specific shop in a specific region: gross margin through a cycle, how steel-price risk is shared in its contracts, bonding and working-capital needs, and customer concentration. The ERP software sold to these shops is screened separately on this branch.

NAICS 33234 vendors named13 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 332 Fabricated metal product manufacturing

Job Shop & Metal Fabrication ERPExecution decides

binding constraint: distribution

Incumbent ECI Software Solutions (JobBOSS²) and Epicor

There are tens of thousands of machine and fabrication shops and no channel that reaches them — they are not on LinkedIn, they buy at trade shows and from their machine-tool distributor, and the ACV does not fund a field sales force. ECI and Epicor got there through decades of distributor relationships rather than through product. 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 3324 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 →

Alongside this industry

This is the most specific level NAICS defines. The other industries under 33231 are its nearest neighbours.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
332314	Concrete reinforcing bar manufacturing	55	screened at 3323
332319	Other plate work and fabricated structural product manufacturing	830	screened at 3323