Just over a year ago on July 1, 2025, TerraSource Global was acquired by Astec Industries for US$245 million. At the time, Jaco van der Merwe, Astec President and CEO said: “Astec and TerraSource are a strong cultural fit with a shared focus on innovation, sustainability and customer-centric solutions.” IM Editorial Director Paul Moore recently sat down with Kevin Hambrice, TerraSource Global Vice President – Materials Solutions, to better understand the synergies in more depth, especially with regard to the product range as it relates to mining.
Kevin Hambrice, TerraSource Global Vice President – Materials Solutions & Paul Moore, IM Editorial Director
Q Can you give some idea of the TerraSource evolution up to the point of the acquisition?
To understand the strengths of TerraSource Global, you need to go back to 2021, which was when the business was carved out of a larger industrial platform public company called Hillenbrand; and another company, Right Lane Industries, obtained majority ownership and full operational control. That included TerraSource and its three major brands – namely Jeffrey Rader, Gundlach Crushers and Pennsylvania Crusher. You would normally find Pennsylvania Crusher and Gundlach Crushers units operating in limestone, coal, salt and potash operations in mining. The Jeffrey Rader line comprises our vibratory feeder technology, which has potential in most industrial minerals and general mining applications. And then we also have a forestry component of that where we do pneumatic conveying, wood hogs, hammer mills and rotary airlock feeders, amongst other machines. So, we took this business on its own path and put some new energy into it; and actually turned it around in a relatively short period of time. Then we acquired a business called Elgin Separation Solutions in 2023, which brought screening technologies in the form of Tabor Machine which makes the screens themselves; plus Norris Screen & Manufacturing which makes the screen media. We also were able to take on the CSI/CMI Screen Dryer line, and also a high speed centrifuge line called Kemtron. So, buying Elgin allowed us to get into a lot of new spaces that we weren’t in. TerraSource equipment was offered worldwide both through dealer partnerships as well as direct selling. Prior to our acquisition by Astec, in 2025, Terrasource employed 400 people across five different countries – the US, Canada, India, China, and Sweden with 15 locations, and manufacturing was located at nine of those. So, we had a pretty strong footprint for smaller company, but we were also very profitable and had achieved that in a short period of time – a lot of it through our robust aftermarket business around parts and service which was providing 60% of our revenue and 80% of our profit. That really gave us the financial freedom to continue to add bolt on businesses and grow further. We bought another important business in May 2024, called Peninsula Iron Works out of Portland, Oregon. They became an aftermarket rebuild and refurb arm for the western United States and western Canada. And so now we had really built a solid business.
Astec | Gundlach Crushers Cage-Paktor®
Q Why was the business an attractive fit for Astec? And what does TerraSource offer in the mining space specifically?
Astec were already very strong in aggregates. We were in aggregates too, but we were stronger in other markets like mining, power and forestry. And on the Elgin side, I would also add waste management and recycling, because our high speed centrifuges and shaker systems are used in soil reclamation. That type of equipment also gives us exposure to the oil and gas business in drilling mud recycling. So, while a primary factor in Astec’s interest was our profitability due to our aftermarket position, they also saw more markets to grow in, and mining was certainly one of those. Looking at mining in more detail, when we think about mining at TerraSource in terms of our portfolio and installed base, we are mainly thinking about soft rock – potash, trona, phosphate, salt, gypsum, other industrial minerals, even specialised ores for things like lithium and tungsten. And also caliche ore for nitrates and iodine. Within this sector we have a number of major customers – SQM, Nutrien, JR Simplot, Compass Minerals, K+S, Mosaic, Intrepid and many others. Many of these are 30 year plus customers that have become very experienced with and reliant on our crusher technology. We are also in the limestone market, both in aggregates but also in the ground calcium carbonate (GCC) space where white limestone is used for a variety of consumer products. In some cases, we are doing 16:1 comminution ratios with our two-tiered double roll crushers. And through Tabor Machine and Pennsylvania Crusher we have a major market in coal screening as well. So what was attractive to Astec was this multimarket focus and our robust focus on service and parts. In addition, I would say they appreciated our business culture and heritage, and the richness of our brands. Our brands on average are over 100 years old, so they’re globally recognised.
Q On the flip side, what did becoming part of Astec bring to TerraSource as a business? And where there any overlaps?
From our side, Astec is also a truly global company but on an altogether different scale so it gave us a whole new level of channel to market horsepower. Looking at their offering, in some cases they had similar product lines under Telsmith, Kolberg-Pioneer and JCI with regard to screens for example, but they were more aimed at the general aggregate market rather than mining, which represents new challenges in terms of robustness and design given that most mining operations run 24/7. There are other differences. In the aggregate space, the media part of the screen business is almost always dealt with a third party. For our media, for our vibratory screens, we make the media, including wedge wire, profile wire and polyurethane panels – with demand dependent on material size and the application. So that’s a big part of our engineering capability. Finally, our Jeffrey Rader operation in Duncan, South Carolina also happens to house our TerraSource demonstration and testing centre – this is a test centre for all our crushing technologies including Pennsylvania Crusher and Gundlach. Customers can check at a smaller scale if the crusher will get their material to the granular size they need. We can also test our feeder technology there. We’ve got over 3,000 different tested materials in our databank. So this kind of expertise is really useful for Astec as well.
Q What about sales synergies? And how is TerraSource now going to market – both independently and as part of a packaged approach with other Astec brands?
We are going to market with the whole Astec suite of products and solutions – in our case especially under the Astec Material Solutions division that covers heavy-duty rock processing, crushing, screening, washing, and material handling equipment. In fact, if you look at all of our screening lines, combining what they had and what we brought, we are now able to offer customers many different tiers of screening. There was actually very little overlap and a lot of great product adjacency. Prior to the acquisition, at TerraSource we were getting ready to develop a cone crusher because we didn’t have one. Being part of Astec brought cone and jaw crushers plus impactors via Telsmith and Kolberg-Pioneer. One product range marriage that is getting a lot of traction now is the combination of our vibratory feeders with cone crushers. Through Jeffrey Rader we supply the Centroload Feeder which is a vibratory feeder with a radial head. It is designed to feed a cone crusher, so it doesn’t choke. It’s got an even feed, which does a couple things. It doubles the life of your crusher plus you’re able to better manage your material flow. And so for most of the cone crushers Astec sells today, it is also being offered with a Centroload Feeder because if you want your crushers to last, you need a heavy duty feeder not a belt feeder. If you walk into a minerals processing plant, especially one handling soft rock minerals or aggregate – you are often going to see today a combination of different Astec solutions, including TerraSource screens and feeders. Not only that but we have Apex centrifuge equipment for dewatering – that was another great product that has adjacency to other Astec equipment that they didn’t have before that is now being deployed as part of complete washing plants.
Q Are many of the heritage and well known brands that were part of TerraSource being kept within the Astec family?
In the majority of cases, yes – they are being kept as sub-brands under the Astec umbrella brand – for example, Astec | Jeffrey Rader or Astec | Gundlach Crushers or Astec | Tabor. For us, that is a great solution as it combines the globally known Astec brand with many of those heritage product names that brought us all together. These families of brands are still important as in many cases they still have a lot of meaning to the customer – who will still talk about a Gundlach or a Telsmith or a Tabor. They still know that Astec runs the overall business, and that overarching brand represents a lot of things like global strength and reach and investment. Similarly in the wood hog business, customers want to talk about Jeffrey Rader. In potash crushing, people are mainly going to say I need a Gundlach which could mean either a double roll crusher or a Cage-Paktor mill crusher.
Astec | Tabor reverse and incline screens
Q Where do you go from here in terms of growth within Astec Industries? And where do you see your position in mining going forward?
One of the things that is great about TerraSource – and Astec as well – is that it still feels entrepreneurial. We’re not done acquiring and building as we want to be the ultimate asset manager for our customers. Everything we do is, how can we provide better service and parts and give you extended life on your piece of equipment. It is all about performance. That means we have to have 95% plus availability on our wear parts. They’ve got to be sitting there ready when they are needed – in mining you can’t survive with even a week’s lead time for critical parts. In terms of the competitive marketplace, Astec is a global major already in terms of asphalt, concrete, and aggregates. In mining, we are nowhere near the likes of Metso or FLS in size but there is definitely a tonnage per hour that’s really wide open for us to serve – and especially in the soft rock space as mentioned before. At the end of the day, that’s why we have and continue to have a presence in places like Chile, South Africa, India, Australia, China and Sweden.
Q Has there been any consolidation and pooling of manufacturing and other assets? Is the new company now able to offer more comprehensive solutions to mining companies?
Of course, acquisitions always involve synergies from consolidation and streamlining – so we have really been unifying all the manufacturing facilities worldwide, along with all the individual dealerships, to as much as possible bring everybody into a global mindset of one Astec but within that emphasise our brands and capabilities. The market verticals in the industries we’re in is tremendous. In mining we see an ability now to offer a turnkey plant solution, similarly to what we already do as Astec in the asphalt and concrete space. We have that complete plant solution covering feeding, crushing, dry and wet sizing plus washing and dewatering. Another aspect of the product portfolio on the equipment side is that we have static plants but also mobile tracked and modular options such as solutions from Telestack with tracked conveyors, radial stackers, and mobile hopper feeders. Digitalisation is also worth a mention. Astec from its Astec Digital side has brought a lot of digital capability into Terrasource. Its Signal Connectivity Suite is a unified digital platform for rock to road – covering aggregates, asphalt, and road building. It connects plant and mobile machinery to provide real-time operational metrics, telematics, and production data on a single cloud-based interface. We are now bringing this into mining as well. Digital automation and AI for us is the future of really driving asset and service performance to a new level, using telematics and sensors to provide true preventative and now predictive maintenance. With Astec Digital, processing is becoming smart processing. And the appetite for that in the industry is greater than it was, because customers understand the potential benefits much better.
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