NAICS 33281Industry · 5-digitregional market

Coating, engraving, cold and heat treating and allied activities

SoftwareJob Shop & Metal Fabrication ERP 332

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in coating, engraving, heat treating and similarly processing metal. These activities often involve heating the metal, and the purpose is often to harden it. In general, the hardening of metal is included. Other activities of this industry include tempering, brazing, plating (including electroplating and re-chroming), polishing, sand-blasting and colouring metal and metal products. Establishments that perform these processes on other materials, such as plastics, in addition to metals, as well as establishments primarily engaged in plating with precious metal for the trade are included. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 584
Under 10 employeesA: 49%

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

1–414825%

5–913924%

10–1912421%

20–4911219%

50–99417%

100–199173%

200–49931%

500+0—

Of 584 Canadian establishments with employees, 49% have fewer than ten — weighted toward mid-sized establishments.

Where they areA

Ontario25043%

Quebec12321%

Alberta9717%

British Columbia6812%

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.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

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 3328 Coating, engraving, cold and heat treating and allied activities covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 3328

Heat Treating & Plating ShopStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

This is the service end of metalworking: a machine shop sends parts out to be hardened, plated, anodised or coated and gets them back in days. The customer base is local and sticky, the work is priced per lot rather than bid against imports, and most of Canada's 584 establishments are small — 64% employ between five and forty-nine people. The cut is what the process costs to own. Bodycote, the largest listed heat treater, earned a 15.7% adjusted operating margin on £727.1M of revenue in 2025 — and spent £77.0M on capital expenditure, 10.6% of revenue, across 136 locations [A]. That is roughly £5M of revenue per plant, each a building full of furnaces, atmospheres and quench systems that burn energy whether or not the racks are full. More telling is what it is doing with its ordinary plants: 31 sites have been declared non-core — described by the company as "older, less efficient and more carbon-intensive" heat treatment serving automotive and general industry — and are being closed, merged or sold, ten of them in France in one transaction [A]. Revenue fell 4%. The general-purpose shop serving local industry is precisely what the scale operator is exiting; the margin sits in aerospace, gas-turbine and specialist processes that require accreditation and years of customer qualification. Plating adds a second weight the heat treater escapes — chemical baths, wastewater permits and the contamination history of any site bought. An entrant can buy a shop, but it buys a furnace-replacement schedule with it.

NAICS 33286 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 →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 33281. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
332810	Coating, engraving, cold and heat treating and allied activities	584	screened at 3328