Astec Industries photo / Jaco van der MerweAstec Industries Inc. has named a new president after Barry Ruffalo, who has headed the Chattanooga-based road-building equipment maker for the past three and a half years, suddenly resigned Friday.
Jaco van der Merwe, who joined Astec in 2016 after serving as president of Atlas Copco Mining and RockExcavation in Johannesburg, South Africa, was named president and chief executive for Astec to succeed Ruffalo. The new CEO most recently was a group president and has headed Astec’s infrastructure solutions division since 2019.
“We are fortunate to have someone with Jaco’s experience and skill to assume the role of CEO,” William D. Gehl, chairman of the Astec board, said in a statement Friday. “He is a proven leader and has a thorough understanding of our business.”
Ruffalo’s departure comes four years after former CEO Ben Brock stepped down as head of the company that his father, Don Brock, founded in 1972.
Shares of Astec fell after the announcement of the CEO change Friday despite overall gains in the stock market. Astec’s stock closed down Friday by nearly 12.1% in trading on the Nasdaq exchange.
Ruffalo helped redirect the company and boosted its sales in the most recent fiscal quarter report, but Astec profits have fallen below what analysts forecast and were down in the previous quarter. Astec’s profit margins have also trailed most of the construction equipment industry, according to a report this week by Simply Wall Street which said Astec “could be at risk of shrinking as a company.”
Astec is due to report its fourth quarter results in early March. Although its stock price has plunged by more than 48% over the past 12 months, Astec is still one of Chattanooga’s biggest companies with nearly $1.2 billion in annual revenues and more than 3,000 employees.
Ruffalo did not announce his future plans.
“We would also like to thank Barry Ruffalo for his efforts at Astec and wish him the best in his future endeavors,” Gehl said in the statement.
The new CEO replacing Ruffalo has held various leadership positions in the construction equipment industry. Gehl said van der Merwe’s knowledge of the market and Astec products “makes Jaco uniquely suited to lead Astec to the next level of our Simplify, Focus and Grow journey.”
Van der Merwe is a naturalized U.S. citizen, originally from South Africa where he completed his metallurgical engineering studies at Tshwane University of Technology and earned a master’s in business administration from the University of Pretoria.
“It is an honor to be the CEO of Astec and I look forward to our journey together,” van her Merwe said in a statement Friday. “Our company has a 50-year history of designing, engineering, manufacturing and servicing the most innovative, efficient and dependable equipment solutions within the rock-to-road segment of the construction industry.”
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6340.