The super seven.

• Author: Griffin, Jedith Fuerst
• Position: Alaskan companies whose revenues grew over 40 percent - The New Forty-Niners

The Super Seven

For seven New Forty-Niner firms last year, business was extremely brisk. These companies each reported revenue increases greater than 40 percent.

Top-ranked Veco International Inc.'s spill cleanup contracts pushed the company into incredible expansion. The firm's revenues rose 773 percent from 1988's $110 million in revenues to $960 million for 1989.

Already experienced in mobilizing large work crews for construction and maintenance projects, Veco's management feels the firm's prior work history was instrumental in landing the job as cleanup manager. The 6,000-employee figure used in the New Forty-Niner listing is an annual average for all Veco operations. But on the cleanup alone Veco's union and non-union construction subsidiaries employed 6,700 workers who earned $267 million in wages.

Payments for supplies, equipment and subcontractor services for cleanup work through September last year totaled $433 million. Processing invoices in a timely manner was a major challenge confronted during the company's dynamic growth; other challenges were finding solutions for transporting, housing and feeding personnel and for shipping and storing equipment and supplies.

Second fastest growing among the New Forty-Niners, with a 254 percent increase in revenues last year, is Walsh and Co. Inc. of Anchorage. The 44th-ranked firm is primarily a general construction firm, but also owns a dairy farm in Curtis, Wash. No stranger to rapid growth, Walsh and Co. also saw revenues leap 54 percent from 1985 to 1986, making it the fourth fastest growing firm identified as a New Forty-Niner in our 1987 edition.

On the reverse side, the business also has experienced the off-years that are common to construction firms, their fates often hinging on the ability to land key projects. Last year, with only $4.3 million in revenues in 1988, Walsh and Co. failed to make the New Forty-Niners list.

Military and government construction projects in Adak and Shemya catapulted Walsh and Co. back to $15.2 million in revenues in 1989. The company's jobs were completed as a joint venture partner with Christenson Raber Kief and Associates of Seattle, Wash. Called Aleutian Constructors, the joint venture specializes in construction on the far-flung Aleutian Islands. Walsh and Co. management also reports an increase in the firm's dairy operation revenues last year.

A third New Forty-Niner posting triple-digit growth last year is Martech USA of Anchorage, ranked 18th. The...