Manufacturers in North Carolina: four regions, from furniture and yarn to pharmaceuticals

This report is for buyers sourcing North Carolina suppliers, job seekers and analysts looking at the state's plants, and B2B sellers working out where in the state to start. It gives the federal count, the regions and industries behind it, the public companies based here, the state's own tools for finding the private ones, and a prospecting plan.

The count

Here is North Carolina in the US Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP), counting all manufacturing industries (NAICS 31 to 33):

By our ranking of the same state file, North Carolina is also ninth by manufacturing employees, and manufacturing is 11.0% of the jobs CBP counts in the state (17th highest), against 8.8% nationally.

What's counted: establishments, each plant or location with paid employees. A furniture company with plants in Hickory and High Point counts twice; owner-only shops aren't included; head offices are classed as management offices. Employee counts are for the week including March 12, 2023.

Four regions, four kinds of plant

County figures are from the CBP county file (which sums to three fewer establishments than the state total); average pay is our calculation, payroll divided by employees. The pattern is clear in the pay column. The Triad and foothills counties (Guilford, Catawba, Randolph) pay $50,000 to $68,000 and lean on furniture: Catawba's 104 furniture plants employ 8,869 people and Randolph's 66 employ 4,115. Durham's 185 plants average 92 employees and pay $112,096; its 15 pharmaceutical and medicine plants employ 3,979. In the east, food processing dominates: Robeson County's 10 food plants employ 5,915 people and Wayne County's 11 employ 2,732. For the Charlotte metro in detail, including its South Carolina counties, see the Charlotte manufacturing report.

What North Carolina makes

The detailed codes name the specialties: 29 poultry plants employ 24,019 people, 41 pharmaceutical preparation plants 16,424, 159 upholstered household furniture plants 15,960, 60 fiber, yarn and thread mills 8,540, 22 biological product plants 6,028 and 10 tire plants 5,913. Few states have that many large plants across that many different industries.

Plant sizes

So 5,531 plants have 1 to 19 employees, 2,096 have 20 to 99 and 1,037 have 100 or more. North Carolina has more plants of 100 or more employees than Georgia (926), on only 10% more plants in total.

Public manufacturers headquartered in North Carolina

SEC EDGAR lists 47 companies with a listed ticker, a manufacturing SIC code (2000 to 3999) and a North Carolina business address. The five largest are all in the Charlotte metro: Honeywell ($37.44 billion revenue in 2025) and Nucor ($32.49 billion) in Charlotte, Ingersoll Rand ($7.65 billion) in Davidson, Coca-Cola Consolidated ($7.23 billion) and Albemarle ($5.14 billion) in Charlotte, from their 2025 Form 10-Ks. The Charlotte report lists the rest of that metro. Elsewhere in the state, checked against each company's latest 10-K:

One lesson from checking these: EDGAR's address can be out of date. It lists Sturm, Ruger at Mayodan, North Carolina, where the company makes some rifles and pistols, but its 10-K gives its principal executive offices as Southport, Connecticut, so it isn't in the table.

Finding and vetting North Carolina manufacturers

1. Start with the state's database. Manufactured in North Carolina, administered by NC State University Industry Extension Services, offers every North Carolina manufacturer a free profile page, and its supplier matching service, funded through NCMEP, finds vendors at no cost.
2. Get the largest employers by county. NC Commerce's Largest Employers tool lists the biggest employers for the state and each county from unemployment insurance records, which names the big plants in any county you're working.
3. Use the state's recruiters for news. The Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina announces new plants and expansions, the best early signal of a plant that's about to buy.
4. Check safety records with the state plan in mind. North Carolina runs its own OSHA-approved plan covering private employers, through the NC Department of Labor. Its inspections appear in OSHA's Establishment Search, which accepts North Carolina state activity numbers as well as company names.
5. Confirm the entity and the address with the NC Secretary of State's business registry and the company's own filings, as the Ruger example shows.

Prospecting North Carolina plants

Match the pitch to the region. Furniture and textile plants in the Triad and foothills are cost-focused and often family-owned or private-equity-owned, so payback arguments work. Pharmaceutical plants in the Triangle buy through validated, documented processes and long qualification cycles. Food plants in the east run high volume on thin margins and value uptime above all.

Worked example: a dust collection service

Illustrative example. The firm and its conversion rates are fictional; the plant counts are Census figures.

Piedmont Dust Systems (piedmontdust.example) inspects and services dust collection for woodworking and textile plants, and wants plants with 20 to 249 employees.

• North Carolina plants with 20 to 249 employees: 1,326 + 770 + 643 = 2,739.
• Furniture, wood products, textile mills and textile product mills are 682 + 558 + 265 + 224 = 1,729 of 8,664 plants (20%), so about 547 fit on size and industry.
• Guilford, Catawba, Randolph, Forsyth and Davidson counties hold 1,696 plants (20% of the state). At the state's average mix that's about 107 target plants, a floor, because furniture and textiles cluster there.
• At one inspection booked per eight accounts worked, the first territory yields about 13 site visits.

The research is finding which plants added a line, changed ownership or had an incident this year. Bebop can search for "Triad furniture and textile plants with 20 to 249 employees that added capacity or changed ownership" and write a playbook for each.

Subject: Dust collection at [Company] since [the new line]

Hi [first name],

I saw [Company] [added a cutting line / expanded the [town] plant]. New machines usually get tied into a collector that was sized for the old layout, and that's where airflow and housekeeping problems start.

We inspect and service dust collection for Triad furniture and textile plants and leave a written list of what to fix first. Could we walk your system in [month]?

[Your name], Piedmont Dust Systems

For North Carolina businesses in every industry, see companies in North Carolina.

Next step: for who signs at a plant, read the manufacturing industry guide.