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Earlier this week PowderandBulk.com publisher Joe Taylor told me of a conversation he had with a friend in the pneumatic conveying business. "They have had a whole series of big sales to the foods industry," he said. "I guess the sales focus changes to the industries least hurt by the recession."

Joe brings up a good point. If your only information about the economy comes from the nightly news, you might be persuaded that no one is doing business right now. But we're dealing with a very large world economy, and there are some significant sectors that continue to function quite well.

Comfort in the Food Industry
As Joe suggested, food (including pet food) is one of those sectors that tends to fare better than others in a recession.

K-Tron Process Group's Bob Barnett agrees. As vice president of sales and marketing, he has been through a number of economic ups and downs. He said, "People eat more comfort food when they're feeling bad about the economy. Companies that make snack foods, cereals and convenience foods tend to grow in recessions."

Barnett noted that food's robust growth even offers some sugar coating to an otherwise dismal plastics industry that is way down due to the auto and housing declines. Those industries making plastic film for food packaging or sheet for microwave food containers are adding process lines.

Healthy Business in the Pharmaceutical Industry
The Pharmaceutical Industry is another sector that keeps investing in production improvements in recessions. K-Tron's Barnett told me the pharmaceutical industry has a very long development process that tends to keep on track despite the mergers and consolidation the industry is experiencing.

On April 30, I'll be attending a seminar in King of Prussia, PA where I'll learn more about the growing momentum for conversion from batch to continuous processing of pharmaceuticals. The seminar, Innovations in Pharmaceutical Processing, is hosted by K-Tron Process Group, Leistritz, Howorth Air Technology, Hosokawa Micron Powder Systems, K-Tron Premier and Quadro Engineering Corp.

At the Resume Bear, a blog for job seekers, a recent article listed medicinal and biological products as number 3 of the top 50 recession-proof industries with 7%, 2%, and 5% growth in the 1990, 2001, and 2007 recessions according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Many of those top 50 recession-proof industries in the Resume Bear article (especially in Part 2 which lists numbers 26-50) are actually government or educational institutions, but there are some additional industrial sectors that are worth noting. In my next post, I'll look at another industry that remains strong in the face of recession.

Don Dunnington
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