IndustryNet Blog

Komatsu celebrated the grand opening of its new office building and Customer Experience Center in Peoria, Illinois, with an event that included a ceremonial tree planting to mark the company's continued investment in the region and commitment to sustainable growth.

The product gets the credit, but the packaging does the work. And the companies that manufacture and supply those materials are essential partners to virtually every industry that makes or moves physical goods. This article examines the current state of the packaging materials industry using data collected directly from U.S. packaging materials suppliers, explores the key trends shaping the sector in 2026, and highlights the largest companies and top suppliers serving buyers across the country.

Sandmeyer Steel Company, a leading producer of stainless steel, nickel alloy, and titanium plate products, today announced the appointment of R. Paul Sandmeyer, III as President and Chief Operating Officer. This appointment marks the transition to fourth-generation family leadership as the Company enters its 75th year.

Healthcare centers rely on medical gas systems and air compressors consistently throughout the day. Whether they are found in operating rooms, emergency departments, patient recovery areas, or intensive care units, these pieces of machinery are vital to supporting the operation of critical equipment and procedures in patient care.

Ulbrich Stainless Steels & Special Metals will celebrate a 14,500-square-foot building expansion at its Wallingford facility and the addition of a high-precision Stretch-Bend-Leveling (SBL) line with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday, June 18, 2026.

If you have ever used IndustryNet to find prospects and hit a wall when it came time to actually make contact, that changes today. IndustryNet Connect is a new self-service subscription that opens up full contact access across more than 350,000 verified industrial supplier listings. Starting at $49 per month, billed monthly, it gives you a direct line to suppliers without the friction of a free listing's limitations or the overhead of a larger data platform.

Employee-owned A-1 Global Holdings, Inc. today announced the appointment of Marcus "Marc" Guy as Director of Operations for A-1 Industries of Georgia, LLC. Guy brings more than 23 years of leadership experience in manufacturing, operations, sales, and product management, with a strong background in process improvement, production leadership, and team development.

Solar Atmospheres Eastern PA facility recently commissioned a new 12' horizontal vacuum furnace. The furnace was designed primarily for Hydriding and Dehydriding (HDH) of titanium. The furnace can also perform the standard gamut of heat-treating processes typical of Solar's extensive customer base.

Every steel mill in the country depends on it. So does every foundry, every pipe manufacturer, and every rebar producer. Scrap metal is the feedstock that keeps a significant share of U.S. metals production running, and the companies that collect, process, and wholesale it occupy a position in the industrial supply chain that most people never think about until the supply tightens.

When shopping for skid steer attachments, price is often the first thing operators compare. A lower-priced attachment may seem like the better value upfront, but long-term performance is what ultimately affects the bottom line.

As industrial manufacturing scales, the end-of-line packaging sector has reached a critical inflection point. Relying on forklift operators or manual floor personnel to secure massive, irregular, or heavy-duty loads is no longer viable for facilities aiming to maximize throughput and eliminate transit damage. The future of industrial packaging belongs to the fully unmanned cell. For manufacturers handling oversized profiles--such as prefabricated walls, structural steel trusses, or bulk insulation bundles--the integration of robotic pick-and-place systems with heavy-duty orbital stretch wrapping machines is redefining operational efficiency.

Memorial Day is a natural time to recognize the service of U.S. veterans. For purchasing and sourcing professionals, it's also a good moment to take a closer look at a segment of the industrial supply base that tends to get overlooked in day-to-day procurement decisions: verified veteran-owned suppliers. The case for sourcing from these companies goes beyond goodwill. There are federal contracting implications, supplier diversity benefits, and data-backed quality signals that make veteran-owned suppliers worth identifying and tracking in your approved supplier list.

Across the country, manufacturers are rethinking their dependence on global supply chains and taking a closer look at what domestic production has to offer. In Northeast Ohio, a region where manufacturing has always been woven into the local identity, PharoPLAST is making that case in a direct way. The company is helping businesses find the right balance of cost, speed, and reliability by bringing injection molding back to American soil.

Founded by CEO Jim Kevany, Blackrock Plastics, LLC provides premier buying and selling services for the recycled plastics industry. The Charleston-based company specializes in purchasing post-industrial scrap plastics and selling recycled plastics from all over the country.

Locking window gaskets are critical sealing components used to secure fixed glass in vehicles, equipment enclosures, marine applications, and industrial machinery. When these seals fail, the result is predictable: water intrusion, vibration noise, air leakage, and long-term structural damage. For engineers and purchasing managers, the challenge is not just finding a replacement gasket, it is finding one that fits exact dimensional requirements, material performance needs, and production timelines.

For years, IndustryNet advertisers have been able to include a link to their company website as part of their listing. That link goes to your homepage, which is a solid starting point. But what if a buyer is searching for a specific product or service? Sending them to your homepage and hoping they find their way is a step in the wrong direction. To this end, IndustryNet has launched a new Deep Links feature, and it gives advertisers something they have been asking for: the ability to link directly from their Company Listing to up to twenty specific product pages, service pages, or landing pages that matter most to their buyers.

In high-volume manufacturing and beverage distribution, efficiency is often measured in seconds. Yet, one of the most persistent "hidden drains" on facility throughput occurs at the end of the line: the pallet-wrapping cycle. For decades, the standard protocol has remained unchanged - forklift operators must transport a load to a stationary wrapper, drop the pallet, wait for the cycle to complete, and re-lift the load for transit. This "Drop-Wrap-Pick" cycle adds significant manual labor and introduces a critical point of failure for unstable or high-gloss loads.

A sourcing manager at a mid-size OEM opens ChatGPT and types: "Who makes custom aluminum castings under 10 lbs in the Midwest?" A list of company names comes back. Yours isn't on it. The buyer calls the first name on the list. This is not a hypothetical. It is happening right now, in purchasing departments across the country, and most small manufacturers have no idea it's occurring, let alone what to do about it.

Precision ground surfaces are everywhere in modern manufacturing, even when they are invisible to the end user. The bearing that keeps a turbine spinning at spec, the roll that gives sheet metal its finish, the carbide tool that holds its edge through thousands of cuts: all of them depend on grinding to achieve the tolerances and surface qualities that make them functional.

Zonar Systems is a Seattle-based leader in smart fleet management technology. Founded in 2001, the company has built its reputation around safety, compliance, and operational efficiency through GPS tracking, telematics, and electronic inspection reporting. Employee engagement is equally central to the Zonar culture. In 2017, the company launched a formal recognition program to celebrate the individuals and teams driving meaningful impact. That commitment led Zonar to partner with Partners in Recognition to create an employee recognition wall with addable name plates, designed to serve as a dynamic display that keeps employees connected to the company's mission.

Imagine you're overseeing a manufacturing process where precision is key. As your machinery operates, embedded sensors continuously monitor various parameters. Suddenly, AI detects an anomaly, signaling a potential issue, while machine learning, drawing on historical data, predicts a future failure and prescribes targeted maintenance actions. While this might sound like a dream, predictive maintenance is becoming more of a reality. Learn more about this real-time, data-driven approach to maintenance that can help your business transform operational efficiency.

Trailers, perhaps the least glamorous workhorses of the American economy, are still among the most essential. Every major industry that moves physical goods depends on them, and the manufacturers and suppliers that build, customize, and distribute trailers form a critical link in the broader transportation and logistics infrastructure of the United States.

Komatsu has reached a historic milestone in autonomous mining, commissioning its 1,000th autonomous ultra-class haul truck equipped with the company's industry-leading FrontRunner Autonomous Haulage System. The milestone reinforces Komatsu's position as the pioneer and global leader in autonomous haulage, having been first to market with a commercial autonomous mining solution in 2008 and now the first OEM to commission 1,000 autonomous ultra-class trucks worldwide.

In today's fast-paced manufacturing landscape, where precision, reliability, and efficiency are non-negotiable, heat staking has emerged as a critical assembly process. From consumer electronics to automotive systems and medical devices, heat staking plays a foundational role in assembling durable, high-performance products at scale.

Something has shifted in the last two years, and U.S. manufacturers are starting to feel it. The phone calls are different. Buyers who spent the better part of two decades asking "can you match what I'm paying offshore?" are now asking different questions: How quickly can you turn this around? What's your capacity? Are you ISO certified? Can you handle this volume domestically? The obsession with unit price, the force that drove so much American manufacturing work to China, Vietnam, and Mexico over the past 30 years, is being tempered, in many industries, by a hard-won appreciation for what cheap and far away actually costs when something goes wrong.

Henry Repeating Arms has announced it is expanding its lineup of modern lever action firearms with the introduction of the new Bear's Leg Pistol, a compact, utility-minded platform that blends the unmistakable profile of the classic Mare's Leg with features tailored to the way today's firearm owners actually use their guns.

Nearly every plastic or rubber component in daily life began as a cavity cut into a steel or aluminum mold. Industrial mold manufacturing is one of the most foundational yet least visible segments of American manufacturing, providing the tooling that makes mass production possible across virtually every consumer and industrial sector. Without precision molds, the production lines that define modern manufacturing would simply stop. The U.S. mold industry is a mature but evolving sector, shaped by growing demand for tighter tolerances, more complex part geometries, and faster tooling cycles. This article examines the current state of the industry using data collected directly from U.S. mold suppliers, explores the key trends driving the sector in 2026, and highlights the largest companies and top suppliers serving the market today.

In manufacturing, sales cycles are long, buying committees are complex, and trust is critical. Rarely does a prospect move from first contact to purchase overnight. This makes ongoing communication just as important as lead generation.

Arezza's on-demand logistics model gives small and mid-size manufacturers access to global supply chain infrastructure without the overhead of long-term contracts. For small and mid-size manufacturers, getting products from factory floor to final destination has always involved a difficult tradeoff: either absorb the overhead of building a logistics operation or depend on third-party providers whose pricing structures favor high-volume shippers. Arezza, a logistics services provider working across ports, trade, manufacturing, and travel, is offering a different path forward.

We are excited to introduce Visitor Alerts, a new feature now available to all IndustryNet preferred and featured suppliers at no additional cost. For the first time, you can gain visibility into the companies that may be actively viewing your listing.