BusinessTN

Executives at Astec Industries had an epiphany in January when they drew a geopolitical map marking the company’s sales penetration in international markets. While aggressively carving out a top spot domestically in the asphalt and aggregate and mining equipment industries, they realized, Astec had also created a product presence in 74% of the world’s countries and on six of seven continents.

“To some degree, we had always treated international business as a bonus,” says Neal Ferry, Astec’s chief operating officer. But with the company at or near the top of multiple markets in the United States, he says, the unexpected breadth of its offshore reach took on particular allure: It’s the straightest road to Astec’s goal of doubling its 2005 sales to $1.2 billion by 2010.

Astec was quick to align its marketing efforts with that new reality. This month, all 13 Astec subsidiaries will attend bauma, the international construction and mining industry trade show, which in past years drew only skeletal representation by the company. Held this year in Munich, bauma will serve as an ironic homecoming for Astec, which some 20 years ago tried—and failed—to establish a continental presence by acquiring two German companies after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Astec spent four years in a still-monopolistic European market, then cut its losses. Founder and CEO Don Brock later joked about the expensive lesson: “We donated $10 million to the German economy.”

Astec’s readiness to learn from mistakes and adapt to opportunity has been a big part of the 35-year-old company’s success, especially given the industry’s susceptibility to the whims of legislators, the oil market and Mother Nature. Since its Reagan-era experience in Germany, Astec has kept its acquisitions stateside. And last year, having finally retired a $146.7 million debt that magnified the effects of an industry-wide recession earlier this decade, Brock announced Astec’s future growth would be two-thirds organic.

To that end, Astec continually repositions itself to anticipate demand, tempering innovation with pragmatism. It pioneered quiet, low-emission asphalt plants that use 50% recycled materials; it also supplies 1970s-era plants to the politically incorrect, but potentially lucrative, third-world market. Meanwhile, Ferry says the company has an eye on the legislative horizon—fledgling subsidiary Astec Underground in Loudon, which manufactures excavating equipment, is waiting to reap at least $60 million in sales from construction of a proposed Alaskan natural gas pipeline.

In a complex industry, it seems, Astec has mined every vein.