Manufacturers in Louisiana: the chemical corridor, the shipyards and 3,044 plants in all

This report is for contractors and suppliers serving Louisiana plants, for buyers looking for a fabricator or shipyard, for job seekers and analysts, and for B2B sellers deciding whether the state deserves its own territory. It covers the official count, the parishes and industries, who owns the big plants, where to check a company out, and a prospecting plan.

Louisiana manufacturing in numbers

County Business Patterns (CBP), the Census Bureau's annual count of businesses with employees, gives these figures for Louisiana manufacturing (NAICS 31 to 33):

In our ranking of the state file, Louisiana is 33rd by manufacturing employees but seventh by average manufacturing pay, behind only California, Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, Wyoming and Arizona. Manufacturing is 7.1% of the jobs CBP counts in the state.

Each Census count is of establishments, meaning single locations with paid employees, measured in the week of March 12, 2023. A fabricator with yards in Houma and Lafayette counts twice, a company's office in New Orleans is classed as a management office, and owner-only shops are left out. Census figures use parishes in place of counties.

Where the plants are

We calculated the per-plant and pay figures from the CBP county file. Two patterns run through the state. Lafayette and Terrebonne are metalworking parishes: between them they have 130 fabricated metal plants, 61 machine shops and 45 oil and gas field machinery makers, and Terrebonne and Lafourche have 19 shipyards. The chemical parishes have few, very large plants: St. Charles (40 plants, $178,377 average pay), St. James (26, $147,359) and Iberville (35, $137,125) pay more than anywhere else in the state. Along the river from East Baton Rouge to St. Charles, plus Calcasieu, eight parishes hold 133 of Louisiana's chemical plants and 19 of its petroleum and coal products plants.

What Louisiana makes

The Census Bureau published an employee figure for petroleum and coal products but flagged it as high-noise (noise added for confidentiality changed it by 5% or more), so we leave it out; the same applies to petroleum refineries, of which Louisiana has 18. The specialties that are published:

Size

In bands: 2,076 with 1 to 19 employees, 708 with 20 to 99 and 260 with 100 or more.

Who owns the big plants

SEC EDGAR lists just one company with a listed ticker, a manufacturing SIC code (2000 to 3999) and a Louisiana business address: Crown Crafts, of Gonzales, which reported $82.3 million in net sales for the year to March 29, 2026. Its 10-K describes infant and toddler bedding, bibs, toys and feeding products, and says contract manufacturers, mostly in China, produce most of them.

The large plants belong to companies headquartered elsewhere, and their own filings name them. CF Industries (Northbrook, Illinois) lists its Donaldsonville, Louisiana complex as "the largest ammonia production complex in the world" and also runs a plant at Waggaman. Westlake (Houston) describes two ethylene production facilities at its Lake Charles olefins site, plus a chlor-alkali plant there and a 50% interest in an adjacent ethylene plant with 2.2 billion pounds a year of capacity. For a seller, that means site decisions are often made locally but contracts and standards come from Houston, Illinois or overseas. For the oil and gas side, see oil and gas companies in Louisiana.

Finding and vetting Louisiana manufacturers

1. Business groups. The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry is the state chapter of the National Association of Manufacturers; the Louisiana Chemistry Association represents chemical manufacturers and publishes a member company directory.
2. Expansion news. Louisiana Economic Development announces new plants and incentive deals, the early signal for construction and maintenance work.
3. Entity check. The Louisiana Secretary of State's business filings search confirms a company's legal name, status and registered agent.
4. Environmental record. For a chemical plant or refinery, EPA's ECHO facility search shows its air, water and hazardous waste permits, inspections and enforcement.
5. Safety record. Louisiana has no OSHA state plan, so federal OSHA's Establishment Search covers private plants.

For improvement help, NIST runs a Manufacturing Extension Partnership center in every state, but its online center list showed no Louisiana entry when we checked; contact NIST MEP for the current Louisiana affiliate.

Prospecting Louisiana plants

The process plants are the prize and the hardest door. Most work goes through approved contractor lists and safety prequalification, so the first sale is getting on the list, usually well before a turnaround.

Worked example: an industrial coatings contractor

Illustrative example. Delta and its bid rates are invented; the plant counts come from County Business Patterns.

Delta Turnaround Coatings (deltacoatings.example) does industrial painting, insulation and fireproofing for chemical plants and refineries during maintenance turnarounds.

• Louisiana chemical and petroleum and coal products plants: 235 + 57 = 292.
• The eight river and Lake Charles parishes hold 133 + 19 = 152 of them, 52% of the total.
• Delta researches all 152, ranks them by known turnaround timing and capital projects, and expects one bid invitation for every ten sites approached: about 15 bid lists a year.

The work is learning which sites have a turnaround or expansion in the next 12 months and who runs maintenance there. Bebop can search for "Louisiana chemical plants and refineries in Ascension, Iberville, St. Charles and Calcasieu parishes with a turnaround or expansion planned in the next year" and write a playbook for each site.

Subject: Coatings and insulation for [site]'s next turnaround

Hi [first name],

I understand [site] has [a turnaround planned for spring / a new unit coming online]. Coatings and insulation crews are usually the last trades booked and the first to run short.

We're prequalified at [other sites] along the river and can send our safety record and crew plan for your contractor review. Who handles prequalification for the next turnaround?

[Your name], Delta Turnaround Coatings

Next step: read the manufacturing industry guide for how plant maintenance, purchasing and corporate sourcing divide decisions.