Last week we published our top 100 North American injection molders. Another 470 firms are in this issue, marking part two of our annual ranking.There are 579 total companies ranked with related sales of $36.8 billion, down from $37.3 billion last year. The decline is mostly the result of the effect of the pandemic on the automotive industry. However, some of the decrease can be attributed to the pass through of lower resin costs on commodity packaging.Let’s look at some averages for this week’s group. The average sales per company was $16.6 million, down from $17 million last year. But it is noteworthy that our total numbers of employees, presses and plants were all up in 2020. The average per company of employees, presses and plants is 99, 28, and 1.5, respectively.Acquisitions were still rolling during the pandemic year. A total of 14 are noted in this year’s ranking, half of which involve private equity firms. Despite the pandemic, and perhaps because of the federal Paycheck Protection Program, we did not see more companies close their doors than we see in a typical year.This is our biggest and most popular processor ranking, and we’d like to keep it growing. Thanks to the efforts of research intern Kelly Arndt, we’ve added 28 new companies this year.The data for each listing is a challenge to compile when firms don’t respond to our surveys.Here is what Arndt, a graduate student majoring in biostatistics at Grand Valley State University, had to say about the project: “My first task as an intern at Plastics News, to collect data on new firms to be added to the listing, gave me a newfound admiration for the data collection process. I became the John Watson to Hollee’s Sherlock Holmes of research, and I loved it!”As a newbie statistician, it was exciting to experience the data collection stage of research since I am usually behind the scenes making graphs and data summaries. There were days where I would cold call to survey a company in the morning just to be hung up on by a sales representative, and by the afternoon I’d be receiving a completed survey from a CEO via email.”I foraged Google for press releases, scavenged on LinkedIn for top officials and probed materials lists on company websites, still a company-completed survey was my dopamine rush. The data collection was a meticulous but highly rewarding process.”We have a very large database of molders, and it is even larger this year thanks to Arndt’s efforts. She’ll be doing the same with our other processor rankings over the next few months. Let’s meet those “new to us” molders: • Custom molder of New Albany, Ohio. • Automotive molder of Monroe, Mich. • Custom molder of Tecate, Calif.• Custom molder of Allendale, Mich.• Custom molder of Sterling Heights, Mich.• Custom and proprietary products molder of Corbeil, Ontario. • Full-service custom molder of Lewiston, Minn.• Automotive molder of Norton Shores, Mich.• Custom molder of Windsor, Ontario. • Custom molder of Riverside, Calif.• Customer molder of St. Charles, Ill.• And as I mentioned last week, , a Las Vegas-based major consolidation force in plastics molding and tooling, was listed for the first time this year as a united company.And these were the biggest movers:• of Port Richey, Fla., moved up 102 places to rank at No. 188. • of South Bend, Ind., moved up 101 places to rank at No. 109. • of Clintonville, Wis., moved up 79 places to rank at No. 245. • of Chicago moved up 72 places to rank at No. 432. • of Schaumburg, Ill., moved up 71 places to rank at No. 373. • of Ocala, Fla., moved up 69 places to rank at No. 390. • of Rogers, Minn., moved up 65 places to rank at No. 98. • of Alexandria, Minn., moved up 62 places to rank at No. 119. • of Grand Rapids, Mich., moved up 51 places to rank at No. 88. • of Rutherfordton, N.C., moved up 43 places to rank at No. 518. This year we also added these directory-only listings, where we confirmed some details about the companies but not enough to rank them:• of Denver. • of Northfield, N.H. • of Kalispell, Mont. • of Sidney, Ohio. • of Booneville, Miss. • of Erie, Pa. • of Clinton Township, Mich. Want more information? Visit our ranking online at . Be sure you are registered and logged in to view the full listings.You can purchase this and other rankings in our data store at .If you work for a company that is missing from the ranking, we would like to include you next time. Just send a note to at or mail your information to Plastics News, P.O. Box 790, Tallmadge, Ohio, 44278. Hollee Keller is Plastics News‘ editorial research coordinator and author of the All Things Data blog on PlasticsNews.com. Follow her on Twitter @holleekeller.Do you have an opinion about this story? Do you have some thoughts you’d like to share with our readers? Plastics News would love to hear from you. 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