Glean, you know, what the company is, how we make money, and how we differentiate ourselves. So, you know, as I mentioned, we have the kind of the traditional industrial packaging products that make up the Zerust Excor business, and then the two new business opportunities, which are, you know, which we've seen some nice increased growth in, which is the Zerust Oil & Gas business, and also the Natur-Tec Bioplastics or, you know, Compostable Plastics Group. You know, just kind of at a glance, it's VCIs, which is what Zerust is, is a volatile corrosion inhibitor. It's been out there in the market for close to 50 years. At this point in time, the patents that we had on the products, or, you know, essentially when we patented the process, those patents expired in the late 1990s.
It's been around that long. The company does a great job in differentiating ourselves, mostly because of the global network that we have set up, where the company has operations that are wholly owned in the United States, in China, in India, but then we also have a series of joint ventures around the world. We have 15 international joint ventures that we typically own 50% of that, you know, on an annual basis, generates a significant amount of cash flow for the company, and that's allowed us to kind of invest in these new growth strategies, so you know, from a product mix standpoint, our industrial business is still the majority of the business that we, you know, that we do, but, as I said, the fastest growing areas of business that we have are really the oil and gas group and the Natur- Tec group.
So kind of get into that a little bit. As I talked about, it's a global company. We do have the, you know, the six or seven wholly owned subsidiaries around the world, and also the 15 joint ventures allows us to sell product throughout 65 countries, worldwide. Typically what we do is we are subcontracting out the manufacturing of our product. For the most part, the Zerust industrial products are a polyethylene-based product where we can make locally in any industrialized market around the world through typical plastic extrusion, and so we are able to, you know, send a proprietary additive to be mixed in during the, you know, when film is being blown and when film is being extruded, that gives the film then the corrosion inhibiting characteristics so that it's then sold locally.
You know, really one of the benefits that the company has and a competitive advantage that the company has is that since we have wholly owned subsidiaries and joint ventures in all these different countries around the world, we're really able to provide a global solution. So, you know, what we're seeing is that when parts are made in Brazil and shipped to Germany, or parts are made in China and shipped to the United States, you know, we're really in a position where we have a competitive advantage because we're able to be at both the location where the parts are being made and then also the location where the parts are being used to really provide that total corrosion solution for our customers. That's really been the way we've differentiated our products from our competitors' products.
You know, now we kind of turn to, you know, how that footprint that I kind of explained, how we've seen growth and kind of the returns from a company standpoint. You know, long term, we have seen significant growth. We've seen, you know, I've been at the company for quite some time, and we've seen a significant amount of growth coming out of a lot of different areas. Specifically, we've had a lot of growth come out of China, a lot of growth come out of India. Obviously, the new business that I talked about, the oil and gas and the Nature Tech business have driven that as well.
We've made some significant investments in those businesses, and historically, you know, that has. We're now at a point where it's, you know, kind of turning those investments to see how we are going to essentially leverage as many of the gross margin dollars back down to the operating profit line. And so, you know, our top line strategic objective is to grow the business at 15%, you know, top line revenue growth while keeping the operating expenses at a less than 10% growth level, you know, thereby leveraging the, you know, the business. And so we've been able to do that in the past, and we have been able to be, you know, a long-term cash-generating business.
And so we've kind of accelerated that over the past, over the past few years, where we have made some larger investments specifically in the new businesses that we expect to pay significant dividends in the coming, you know, one, three, five years as we continue to see the business grow. So let's kind of walk through those three, you know, revenue-generating businesses. As I talked about, there's the what I call the traditional Zerust industrial, industrial business. And, you know, that can be anything from films to paper products to rust removers, just products that we're typically selling to industrial companies. Those may be automotive companies. Those can also be construction, agriculture, mining. Those are some of the typical areas that we sell to.
Historically, it's any place where metal parts or, you know, specifically ferrous metal parts, once they are manufactured, they typically have a high rate of corrosion that occurs before they're used in production. So if you think of a car, you would have a crankshaft, a camshaft, piston heads, things like that, that they may be manufactured in one area, and they're not going to go into an actual car where they would be protected with, you know, being, you know, oiled from the engine and things like that, isn't going to be protected for a long period of time. That's where the Zerust product comes in. You essentially use these fast-action corrosion-inhibiting products to dramatically slow down the corrosion that would occur on a part that needs to maintain specific tolerances and needs to be corrosion-free.
That historically has been where the company has generated what it could, you know, kind of the bread and butter of the company, which has generated a significant amount of cash and has been very profitable for us. You know, those markets are still growing. We're still seeing the growth in various industries, whether it's, you know, automotive, general industry, agriculture, mining. We're still seeing growth in those areas and opportunities in those areas. That's a lot of what is kind of fueling the top line growth that we're seeing. We also have other areas that, you know, as far as opportunities that we're seeing in other countries where we have now wholly owned subsidiaries, where we're seeing opportunities there. We're seeing significant growth coming out of China. We're seeing growth and opportunities in India.
You know, we still feel that our core business is still a business that is growing and is going to contribute for a significant period of time. So, but we did, you know, in certain areas, like we talked about China and North America, we are currently at, you know, record sales levels. So, the second opportunity I talked about is the oil and gas opportunity, which is using similar chemistry, but basically it is using that similar chemistry to protect oil and gas infrastructure. These may be pipelines that we're protecting, pipe casings, above-ground storage tank bottoms. We just recently signed a $13 million three-year contract with an FPSO operator in Brazil.
Essentially what we're doing is we're taking the metal and the corrosion that is, you know, typically very, very fast in the oil and gas space, and we're providing solutions to our customers where we can essentially extend the life of the oil and gas infrastructure that they have, significantly longer than traditional methods that are being used for corrosion mitigation. We've been able to show that our solutions cost less than traditional solutions, and we've been shown that it essentially works better.
While the oil and gas space, you know, in the market is a difficult market to get into because of just general barriers to entry that companies have, we've been able to take steps of dealing with the American Petroleum Institute, with dealing with the National Association of Corrosion Engineers, and other areas where we've been able to add significant legitimacy to our products where we've been able to sell to large oil and gas players. We feel like the opportunity inside of oil and gas is significantly bigger than anything else that we're seeing, with opportunities around the world.
We've had significant investments over the past few years in the oil and gas space in the Middle East, in Northern Europe, in North America, in areas where there's, you know, huge investments in oil and gas infrastructure and Brazil as well, as I mentioned. So we're working with large companies like Petrobras, like British Petroleum, you know, kind of the main people that you would expect to see. We're really starting to see traction with our oil and gas solutions. The third kind of revenue area is the Natur- Tec area, which is we basically take base resins from companies like Cargill NatureWorks and BASF and Total Corbion. We take base resins of certified compostable resins that are made either corn-based, typically they're corn-based or polyethylene-based, but still certified compostable resins.
And we have a patented system where we can take those base resins and make them significantly stronger, and they will run better on traditional extrusion or molding equipment. And so as we've seen the change in the market take place where plastics are being transitioned, whether they're municipal mandates, state mandates, or entire countries that are essentially banning single-use plastics, there's a huge opportunity for the Natur-Tec resins. And so we're going to market in two different ways with Natur-Tec. One is that we will sell our specific resins to companies so that they can manufacture their own products on their own extrusion or molding equipment with our resins. Our resins perform better than just taking the base resins that are manufactured by these large companies. They're individually tailored to these companies to provide a solution for them that works.
The other way that we go to market is selling through janitorial sanitation distributors, food service distributors, to basically different municipalities and states that have plastic or composting mandates in place. And so a lot of the business that we started with was on the West Coast in the Washington, Oregon, California area, but we're seeing that composting initiatives are being put in place really around the world. You're seeing it in Europe. You're seeing it in certain parts of Asia, and you're certainly still seeing it in North America, so the Natur-Tec business has also been a fast-growing business for us with a fast-growing market. And so it's certainly an area that we see as there's a tremendous amount of growth left for the company.
And typically this is also, as we've seen the markets increase and our revenues increase, we've also been able to, you know, over the past five years, increase our gross margins. It's happening because one is that the gross margins that we get from the oil and gas space are a higher gross margin than we typically see from the Zerust industrial space. Also, the gross margins that we're able to get in the Natur-Tec space have been growing because the raw material inputs that we typically use, those base resins from those companies, as they're becoming more readily available, the base resins are costing less.
So we're seeing less of a competitive environment for some of the base resins in Natur-Tec, which has kind of pushed our gross margin up a little bit, you know, over the past four or five years, which is certainly healthy. And we're looking to then, you know, long term, you know, get those benefits and kind of increase and have a higher gross margin given the weighted average, you know, components to our, to our products. So kind of moving on as far as profitability goes, one thing that's kind of different about the company is that we have a significant amount of revenue that comes in from our joint ventures. And those joint ventures are, they're consolidated from an equity standpoint, not from a full consolidation standpoint.
So when we have $90-$100 million of revenue at our joint ventures, that's not coming through in our top line, but on our income statement, you're seeing a joint venture operating income line. And that the joint venture operating income is essentially the profits that we're getting, whether they're in royalties or equity income at our joint ventures. It makes our income statement look a little different than a typical manufacturing company, but it certainly kind of shows how the, how we're generating the profits. I mean, the kind of key takeaway is that as we kind of continue to see the growth that we're expecting to see over the coming one, three, five years, we have a tremendous opportunity to, you know, leverage those gross margin dollars to the bottom line.
We certainly don't expect to have any significant increases from an operating standpoint that would come close to being able to match the anticipated revenue growth that we will see. Kind of moving on now, you know, to the financial model and kind of how we deploy capital. As I kind of talked about, you know, the three different buckets that we have, you can see that we have, you know, what we're doing from a revenue standpoint and kind of the different composition as far as what makes it up and where the revenue is coming from. You know, the mix matters because it certainly drives the margin, and it also allows for a significant amount of resilience.
And what I mean by that is we have different territories where, certain obviously, you know, if things go well in one area, we're not heavily focused just on one market. And so, you know, we typically see is that if things are up in, you know, right now, things are up in China, things are up in North America, but there's certain, you know, pressures that we're seeing in Europe. It just kind of allows us to be a little bit more diversified across all of our different product categories and geographies, which has allowed us a little more flexibility with, you know, with not being as heavily impacted by kind of the macro situations in each country. You know, I think the company certainly has a, you know, a track record of creating value.
As I said, the company's been around for a significant amount of time. It has, you know, the company does pay a quarterly cash dividend. We lowered the dividend recently in the past few years simply because of the amount of capital that we deployed in order to make investments in these new businesses, and so, you know, specifically over the past two or three years, we have made significant investments, increased investments in the oil and gas space to go after new opportunities. We have deployed capital in purchasing a new building next to us, and certainly the goal is that, you know, is to maintain the healthy balance sheet that we've always had, and, you know, we feel like we're pretty conservative from the standpoint of how we deploy our capital.
As far as kind of talking about, you know, why NTIC and, you know, kind of what differentiates the company is that, you know, we are going after large markets. We feel that there's, you know, very favorable long-term trends and competitive advantages that we have that are going to make us successful. The management of NTIC has been here for a long time, and we are heavily invested as our shareholders are as far as having a large, you know, ownership of the company. You know, certainly what we expect to do is to take the strategic plan that we have and translate that into significant growth that we expect to see across the Nature Tech Group, across the oil and gas group, and across the, you know, the North American Industrial Group.
And so we feel like we have a compelling plan and a compelling reason why we're going to be successful. And that's really what we're looking to push forward. As far as the, you know, the overall state of the business, it's, you know, the industrial market has obviously seen some ups and downs specifically in North America. We have traditionally been very automotive focused. We're working to diversify out of that automotive focus and been doing a good job with that specifically with not just the oil and gas business and the Natur-Tec business, but also with getting into new markets as far as the general industry, construction, agriculture, things like that.
And so, you know, between that, between the growth that we're seeing in oil and gas with, like I said, the new opportunities with the contracts in Brazil, the investments that we've made in starting up a new subsidiary in a new facility in the Middle East, we expect oil and gas to be one of the fastest growers that we're going to see over the coming one, three, five years. And again, Nature Tech is an area that obviously you can see from a depending on where you are, the composting initiatives, compostable plastics is certainly something that we're seeing a focus on at the municipal level, at the state level where various mandates are coming in. And we certainly feel like that's going to, again, drive the business and creates a tremendous new market and new opportunities for us.
So, you know, with that, I feel like we're, you know, we're at a good point. And with that, I kind of would take your questions.
Okay, Matt, thank you so much for sharing that story and going through the entire presentation. For those of you in the audience, as a reminder, we do have a couple more minutes here. So if you do have any questions, please feel free to type those into the box and we will get to as many as we can. Matt, I want to start with a couple questions that'll maybe allow you to expand a little bit upon what you've already discussed in the presentation. But you mentioned, you know, Zerust Oil & Gas, and that's clearly becoming a meaningful growth driver, or you hope that it will become a more meaningful growth driver moving forward.
So as we think about with the business scaling, you know, how should we think about, or investors in general, think about the long-term margin profile of that business relative to traditional Zerust industrial? And then what things do you think need to go right operationally for it to be a true earnings contributor, down the road as opposed to just a major revenue driver?
Sure. I mean, I'd say the healthy thing, the nice thing for us from an oil and gas standpoint is the margins are significantly higher than the traditional industrial space. They're typically in the 60-plus% range. So as we see the increase in the oil and gas space, you know, the increase in the oil and gas revenues, we're going to see the gross margin from a weighted average standpoint of the company, rise with that.
You know, so that's been a, you know, that's certainly been a, you know, a contributor from a gross margin standpoint. As far as, you know, the opportunities go inside of oil and gas, it's interesting how that works. And part of the difficulties that we've had is as we get established in the oil and gas space, it tends to be more project-based. And so that adds to the volatility of revenues really from a quarter-to-quarter basis. And so what we typically see is that rather than selling pallet-load quantities of plastic packaging, you're now at a point where the, you know, the typical sale is going to be more $100,000, $300,000, $400,000. And so it's going to add to a little bit of the volatility on a quarter-to-quarter basis.
What's been helpful is that, like with the new contract that we have in Brazil, that actually involves us doing the application of our solution on these FPSOs that are in Brazil. And so we actually people out on these FPSO platforms where they're doing the application work. The benefit to that is that's going to give us a much more consistent month-to-month revenue, as we kind of take advantage of that contract and start to produce products. But there's also just, you know, there's really just a tremendous amount of investment that happens in infrastructure from an oil and gas space. And so, you know, the opportunity is there.
We feel like we have the track record and the credibility now to take that and to show the value that we can provide to the customers to, you know, by really expanding and extending how long their infrastructure can last.
Perfect. I had a bunch of questions on my own that I was going to go through, but we just had a large rush of questions come in from the audience. Mm-hmm. I guess, you know, just going back to some of the things that you guys track, can you remind us of maybe, or if there are any, you know, KPIs that management tracks internally to really track execution against some of your longer-term goals?
Sure. From a, the KPIs are really set up based on each individual division.
I would say our shorter-term KPIs have more to do with, at this point in time, with gross margin and execution and holding various gross margins at a departmental level at a stable point, and also operating expenses, holding the operating expense growth and still being able to capitalize. The main strategic objective of the company over the next year or two is going to be how to drive gross margin dollars to the bottom line, and that is really where we are focusing our efforts. We've spent a tremendous amount of money over the past two years in investing in bringing in various salespeople, bringing in the technical leads that are able to work with us in these different areas, and now it's a matter of seeing the ROI on those specific investments.
Do you have a margin level that you think is structurally achievable for the company, or is that not something that you've kind of relayed to the broader investment community yet?
It's a little difficult to pin what your target gross margin is going to be because it's so different for each division. And so what we've seen is that in quarters where we've had low oil and gas sales, the gross margin has been down. In quarters where the oil and gas sales have been up, the gross margin is going to be up. You know, specifically, historically, Natur-Tec gross margins have been slightly lower than Zerust industrial gross margins.
So as the Natur-Tec business has ramped up, even though the, you know, the ultimate, you know, gross margin dollars have increased, the gross margin percentage has at times come down because of the, you know, the composition of what we're selling. And so, you know, when you've got three kind of distinct business units that have, you know, kind of three target gross margins, it's difficult to pin an exact gross margin for the blended three units.
Yeah. We've got about a minute left, but I did want to touch on this one thing because I don't most investors that are newer to your story probably aren't familiar with how important joint ventures are for the company. And I believe you mentioned that you have about 15 of them globally. And I know that you had a slide on this and you expanded on it a little bit, but can you talk a little bit to us just about how much control you guys have over driving profitability within the joint ventures and any concrete actions you're taking or hope to take this year and into 2027 potentially to really drive profitability higher within those JVs?
Yeah. I mean, just starting from a high level, with understanding the income statement, there's obviously we don't have the revenues from the joint ventures counting towards our top line revenues. And how you can really think about that is historically, NTIC, our portion of income is we typically get 10%-11% of every joint venture dollar sold comes back to us as after-tax profit.
And so, you know, where you look at from the standpoint that we have, you know, $90-$100 million of joint venture dollars, that joint venture revenue, that's going to contribute a significant amount of profit to the company. And it's almost like a hidden driver that sometimes when people look at the company, they don't really understand how much significance that joint venture income has to the overall profitability of the company.
And so, you know, what we do is we individually work with each joint venture in their geography to drive not just new business, but introduce new products that they can sell, and then work with them as far as the, I don't want to call it the cross-pollination, but there's a lot of opportunities when you're dealing with these global companies where they may have an opportunity in one country, but the production is going to be in a different country. And so it's important that our joint ventures kind of work together, you know, where we have joint venture partners meetings and joint venture sales meetings so they understand what's going on, you know, in China or in Thailand can heavily impact what's happening in a different area where they're working together.
We certainly have kind of our hand on each joint venture to make sure that we have business development managers that will help kind of coordinate opportunities across businesses, across geographies to help drive that growth because that is a significant contributor to our overall profitability.
Excellent. Thank you. We've come up on time, but Matt, this has been a really good, really good presentation, and we thank you for your willingness to participate in the conference, and we're thankful to be able to have learned more about NTIC. For those of you in the audience, thank you for your participation and for your being here today. I'm sorry we weren't able to get to all the questions, but I do think this was a really good use of time and a good way for the company to share its message moving forward.
So, Matt, with that, thank you again so much for the presentation, and we look forward to hearing from you again soon.
Appreciate that. Thanks so much, Dan.
Okay. Bye, everyone.