Manufacturers in Missouri: two big metros, a long rural tail and the official counts

This report is for buyers sourcing Missouri suppliers, people researching or looking for work in the state's plants, and B2B sellers deciding how to split Missouri between St. Louis, Kansas City and the rest. It compares the two official counts, maps the counties and industries, lists the public companies headquartered here, points to the state's own sources and ends with a prospecting plan.

Two official counts

The US Census Bureau and Missouri's own labor market office measure manufacturing differently, and both are useful:

Use the Census figures, from County Business Patterns (CBP), to compare Missouri with other states and to see size bands and detailed industries; use MERIC's for the most recent picture. The Missouri Economic Research and Information Center's September 2026 brief also puts manufacturing at 11.0% of the state's 2025 gross state product, $51.56 billion, and 11.4% of private-sector jobs.

The Census data in full, all manufacturing (NAICS 31 to 33):

By our ranking of the state file, Missouri is 15th by manufacturing employees, and manufacturing is 10.8% of the jobs CBP counts in the state. CBP counts establishments, locations with paid employees: a company with plants in Sedalia and Joplin counts twice, a head office in Clayton is a management office, and owner-only shops aren't counted.

Where the plants are

Per-plant figures are our calculation from the CBP county file (which sums to five fewer establishments than the state). St. Louis County, Jackson County and St. Louis city have 1,682 plants between them, 31% of the state. Buchanan County's 78 plants average 152 employees, the biggest of any county listed. MERIC's brief adds that 70 of Missouri's 115 counties have a higher share of manufacturing jobs than the nation, led by Ralls County.

What Missouri makes

The detailed codes behind the big numbers: four light truck and utility vehicle plants employ 11,255 people, 33 other vehicle parts plants 4,284, 21 heating and air-conditioning equipment plants 6,742, 63 meat processors 5,042, 12 biological product plants 3,441 and 35 soap and detergent plants 3,430. Missouri's six aircraft plants have an employee figure the Census Bureau flagged as high-noise (changed by 5% or more for confidentiality), so we don't report it; Boeing's 10-K says about 3,200 union employees at its St. Louis area sites struck for 101 days in 2025, disrupting programs including the F/A-18, F-15, T-7A and MQ-25.

MERIC's brief puts Missouri's manufactured exports at $17.03 billion in 2025, led by transportation equipment ($5.71 billion) and chemicals ($3.68 billion), with Canada and Mexico the top destinations.

Size

Summed into bands, Missouri has 3,598 plants under 20 employees, 1,260 with 20 to 99 and 602 with 100 or more.

Public manufacturers headquartered in Missouri

SEC EDGAR lists 11 companies with a listed ticker, a manufacturing SIC code (2000 to 3999) and a Missouri business address. Ten of them, checked against each company's latest Form 10-K:

All but one are in the St. Louis area. Revenue is company-wide, and many of Missouri's largest plants, including Boeing's St. Louis aircraft sites, belong to companies headquartered in other states.

Finding and vetting Missouri manufacturers

Prospecting Missouri plants

Split the state by drive time, not by county lines: St. Louis and its collar counties, Kansas City across both Jackson and Clay, and a southwest route through Springfield and Joplin. Rural plants are often the largest employer in their town, and their managers answer to a parent company elsewhere.

Worked example: a plant-floor wireless integrator

Illustrative example. Gateway and its survey rates are invented; the counts are County Business Patterns data.

Gateway Plant Networks (gatewayplantnet.example) designs Wi-Fi and private cellular networks for factories adding sensors, scanners and autonomous carts, and wants plants with 50 to 499 employees.

• Missouri plants with 50 to 499 employees: 409 + 375 + 144 = 928.
• The St. Louis counties (St. Louis County, St. Louis city, St. Charles, Franklin and Jefferson) and Kansas City's Jackson and Clay counties hold 2,457 of the state's plants (45%), so about 420 of the targets are in the two metros.
• At one site survey per eight accounts approached, that's about 52 surveys, four to five months of work for two engineers doing 12 a month. Gateway starts with plants that have announced automation projects.

The research is finding which plants are adding automation or a new building now. Bebop can search for "St. Louis and Kansas City manufacturing plants with 50 to 499 employees that announced automation, a new warehouse or a plant expansion this year" and write a playbook for each.

Subject: Coverage on the floor at [Company] [town]

Hi [first name],

I saw [Company] is [adding autonomous carts / expanding the [town] plant]. The office Wi-Fi rarely survives the move to the plant floor: steel racking, moving equipment and hundreds of new devices.

We design industrial wireless for Missouri plants your size and start with a one-day site survey and a coverage map. Could we survey your floor in [month]?

[Your name], Gateway Plant Networks

For the metros in every industry, see companies in St. Louis and the largest employers in Kansas City.

Next step: build the list itself with how to build a prospect list.