Manufacturers in Texas: 21,034 plants, five metros and the industries behind them

This report is for buyers and engineers sourcing Texas suppliers, people researching the state's industry or looking for work in it, and B2B sellers deciding where in Texas to put their effort. It covers the federal count, the metros and industries that make it up, the public manufacturers headquartered here, the groups and registries for finding private ones, and a prospecting plan.

Texas manufacturing at a glance

Texas manufacturing (NAICS 31 to 33) as the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) counts it:

Texas is also second by manufacturing employees in our ranking of the state file. Because the rest of the Texas economy is so large, manufacturing is only 7.2% of the jobs CBP counts in the state, below the national 8.8%.

The Texas Association of Manufacturers says the state's manufacturers "employ more than 969,000 Texans", without giving a year or source, and other counts differ again. CBP counts establishments with paid employees for the week of March 12, 2023: a company with plants in Tyler and Temple counts twice, its head office is a management office, and owner-only shops aren't included. Its figures are the ones to use when comparing Texas with other states or metros.

Four metros hold two-thirds

Metro figures are from the CBP metro file; pay is our calculation. Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio hold 14,364 plants (68%) and 595,806 manufacturing employees (69%). Each has its own character. Houston is energy equipment, chemicals and refining, covered in detail in the Houston manufacturing report. Dallas-Fort Worth has fewer plants than Houston but more jobs: its 19 aircraft plants employ 21,294 people and its computer and electronics plants 37,386; see the Dallas manufacturing report. Austin pays the most of the big four, and computer and electronics plants, including 32 semiconductor plants, employ 22% of its manufacturing workforce. San Antonio's largest groups are transportation equipment (12,616 employees) and food (10,081). The border metros, El Paso and McAllen, have many small plants paying under $47,000, while Beaumont-Port Arthur's 46 chemical plants and seven petroleum and coal products plants give it the highest average pay.

What Texas makes

Petroleum and coal products, with 212 plants and 24,114 employees, pays the most of any subsector ($128,266 on average). The detailed codes pick out the specialties:

Size

Most Texas plants are small: 14,511 have 1 to 19 employees and 4,779 have 20 to 99. The 1,744 with 100 or more (1,126 with 100 to 249, 374 with 250 to 499, 174 with 500 to 999 and 70 with 1,000 or more) employ most of the workforce.

Public manufacturers headquartered in Texas

SEC EDGAR lists 153 companies with a listed ticker, a manufacturing SIC code (2000 to 3999) and a Texas business address. The largest, each checked against the cover page and income statement of its latest Form 10-K:

We left out ConocoPhillips, which EDGAR codes as a refiner but whose 10-K calls it "an independent E&P company", and Sunoco LP, a fuel distributor. Revenue is company-wide; most of these companies also have plants outside Texas.

Finding and vetting Texas manufacturers

For a supplier, add the quality system your parts need (ISO 9001, AS9100 for aerospace, API licensing for oilfield products) and confirm the certificate with the issuing body before the first order.

Prospecting Texas manufacturers

Timing differs by cluster. Oilfield equipment makers follow drilling activity. Refineries and chemical plants plan maintenance turnarounds months ahead. Aerospace, defense and chip plants buy against long programs and push quality and cybersecurity rules down to their suppliers. New plants and expansions, which the state and regional development groups announce, are the clearest signal everywhere.

Worked example: an electrical maintenance contractor

Illustrative example. Lone Star Arc Services and its rates are invented; plant counts are from County Business Patterns.

Lone Star Arc Services (lonestararc.example) does infrared surveys, switchgear maintenance and arc flash studies, and wants plants with 100 to 999 employees, which run enough electrical equipment to need a program but rarely staff it fully.

• Texas plants with 100 to 999 employees: 1,126 + 374 + 174 = 1,674.
• Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth hold 11,412 of the state's 21,034 plants (54%). At the same share, about 910 of the target plants are in its two home metros.
• Lone Star researches 60 a month and expects one survey per ten accounts: about six surveys a month, and a year to cover both metros once.

The slow part is knowing which plants just added a line, had an outage or hired a new maintenance manager. Bebop can search for "Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston manufacturing plants with 100 to 999 employees that announced an expansion or are hiring an electrical maintenance supervisor" and write a playbook for each account.

Subject: Switchgear at [Company] [site] after the expansion

Hi [first name],

I saw [Company] is [adding a line / expanding] at [site]. New load on old switchgear is where most unplanned electrical outages start, and arc flash labels are usually the first thing out of date.

We run infrared surveys and arc flash updates for Texas plants your size and hand over a ranked fix list the same week. Would a survey in [month] be useful?

[Your name], Lone Star Arc Services

For Texas businesses in every industry, see companies in Texas.

Next step: for how plants buy and who signs off, read the manufacturing industry guide.