Manufacturers in Iowa: meat, machinery and big plants in small towns

This report is for companies sourcing from Iowa suppliers, people comparing manufacturing employers across the state, and B2B sellers working Iowa plants. It covers the federal count and how Iowa compares, the food and machinery clusters, where the plants are, who owns them and how to prospect a market where the big customers are spread across small towns.

Iowa manufacturing in numbers

Iowa's totals in the Census Bureau's 2023 County Business Patterns (CBP), all manufacturing industries (NAICS 31 to 33):

Ranking the CBP state file ourselves, Iowa is 23rd by manufacturing employees and third by manufacturing's share of private-sector jobs (15.8%), after Wisconsin (18.2%) and Indiana (17.9%). The US share is 8.8%. Iowa's plants average half again the national size of 43.4 employees.

Meat and machinery

Food and machinery together employ 98,890 people, 44% of the state's manufacturing jobs. The detailed codes show what sits underneath:

Wet corn milling plants pay an average of $101,623, from Census payroll. For the machinery groups, the Census Bureau published payroll but flagged it as high-noise (the noise it adds to protect confidentiality changed the figure by 5% or more), so we don't report their pay. Employment in computer and electronic products carries the same high-noise flag, so that row shows the 60 plants but not their headcount.

Where Iowa's plants are

The five largest counties have 1,000 plants, 29% of the state's; the ten in the table have 1,403 (41%). The other 89 counties hold the remaining 59%, so an Iowa territory is mostly outside the metro areas. Sioux County, in the northwest corner, has more plants than Woodbury, Johnson or Story.

Plant size

So 2,104 Iowa plants have fewer than 20 employees, 865 have 20 to 99 and 449 have at least 100. CBP counts establishments with paid employees, not companies: each plant is counted where it is, a company's head office counts as an office, and owner-only shops are excluded. The employee figures are a snapshot from March 2023.

Who owns Iowa's big plants

Few of them are run from Iowa. SEC EDGAR lists five companies with a listed ticker, a manufacturing SIC code and an Iowa address, and only three make things and report meaningful revenue, according to their latest 10-Ks:

The other two are Lee Enterprises, a Davenport newspaper publisher that the old SIC system files under manufacturing, and SunHydrogen, which reported no meaningful revenue. Most large Iowa plants belong to companies headquartered elsewhere. Grow Cedar Valley, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls economic development group, lists Deere & Co (farm equipment), Tyson Fresh Meats (pork processing), Viking Pump, Nestlé USA, ConAgra Foods and MasterBrand among the area's manufacturers.

Where to find Iowa manufacturers

• CIRAS, the Center for Industrial Research and Service at Iowa State University in Ames, is Iowa's NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership center.
• ABI, the Iowa Association of Business and Industry, calls itself the voice of Iowa business since 1903 and runs a manufacturing conference; its member directory is for members only.
• Regional economic development groups such as Grow Cedar Valley name the manufacturers in their areas; most Iowa counties have one.
• OSHA's establishment search covers Iowa's state-plan inspections: search by plant name and ZIP code.

Prospecting Iowa manufacturers

Iowa rewards territory planning. Big meat and machinery plants are scattered across small towns, so a rep can spend more time driving than meeting. Group accounts by county cluster (east Iowa's Linn, Johnson, Scott, Dubuque and Black Hawk counties have 744 plants between them) and plan visits around them. For the carriers that haul their freight, see trucking companies in Iowa. At branch plants of national companies, the plant manager and maintenance and safety leads choose local services, and corporate buys equipment and materials. Food plants that run around the clock have narrow windows for meetings, so ask the plant when its managers are easiest to reach.

Worked example: an arc flash study and electrical safety service

Illustrative example. The firm, its assumptions and rates are invented; the plant counts are Census data.

Hawkeye Electrical Safety (hawkeyesafety.example) does arc flash studies, electrical safety training and infrared inspections for plants.

• Iowa plants with 50 or more employees: 325 + 265 + 106 + 47 + 31 = 774.
• Food and machinery are 503 + 375 = 878 of 3,418 plants (26%), so at least 199 fit, a floor because those plants run larger than average.
• Two contacts each (maintenance manager and EHS manager) gives 398 people; a 6% reply rate, about 24 conversations; one study per four conversations, 6 new plants.

What matters is which plants are adding equipment or have an OSHA citation to fix. Bebop can search for "Iowa meat processing and agricultural machinery plants with 100 or more employees hiring maintenance or EHS managers" and research each one.

Subject: Arc flash labels at [Company] [town]

Hi [first name],

I saw [Company] is [adding a line / expanding the [town] plant]. New equipment usually means the arc flash study and panel labels no longer match what's on the floor.

We update arc flash studies for Iowa plants and train your electricians on the new labels in the same visit. Would a site walk in [month] be useful?

[Your name], Hawkeye Electrical Safety

Next step: read the manufacturing industry guide for who buys what inside a plant.