Plastipak's Plotzke wins CFO of the Year

Michael Plotzke, chief financial officer, treasurer and senior vice president of finance of Plymouth, Mich.-based Plastipak Holdings Inc., was awarded Plastics News' CFO of the Year award at the 2018 Plastics Financial Summit, held Oct. 23-24 in Chicago.

"I wouldn't have received that award without my team," Plotzke said in an interview following the conference. "There's no 'I' in 'team.' I tell people that all the time. … I like to analogize baseball teams' success. There's the teamwork concept; there's no one person that makes the team win. I would tell you that Bill [Young, Plastipak CEO, president and chairman] over the years has built himself a very strong team around him. Without his team, he would not have achieved the success that he has."

Container maker Plastipak celebrated its 50-year anniversary last year and has 6,400 employees working in more than 40 production sites worldwide. The company serves the aerosol; consumer cleaning; personal care; food and beverage; and automotive, industrial and agricultural products markets.

Plastipak Packaging Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Plastipak Holdings, was ranked third in the most recent list of PN blow molders with sales of $1.87 billion, according to PN data. Plotzke said Plastipak Holdings' net sales for 2017 were approximately $2.8 billion, and sales for 2018 should exceed $3 billion.

Plotzke, 61, leads a team of "outstanding finance professionals" to raise capital to fuel company growth, which has included two acquisitions in the last three and a half years. One was recycling company Clean Tech UK, which he described as "strategic."

"It really allows us to provide recycled content to some major consumer product companies," he said. "It was a very small acquisition, but it gave us a lot of capability in that region for recycling content."

Plastipak also acquired Artenius PET Packaging Europe, or APPE, which increased the company's sales by approximately $650 million and allowed it to expand its footprint across Europe in areas in which it didn't previously operate.

"When we look at acquisitions, we look at the management team, the age of the equipment, the technology they have," he said, "and if all of those boxes are checked, then that becomes a very attractive target for us."

Plotzke was born in Detroit and raised in Warren, Mich., with six siblings. His father was a detective for the Warren Police Department.

When he graduated from high school, he worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His brother was working for the FBI in Washington at the time, and his sister was working for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Plotzke continued working for the FBI full time while studying in college. Up until his senior year, he wanted to be an agent.

"The FBI brought in a new director, and one of the first mandates issued was that no longer would special clerks be automatically admitted to the FBI as an agent, which is what path I was pursing," he said. "My mentor pulled me aside and he said, 'Listen, kid, if you want to be an agent … you either need an accounting degree or a law degree.' At the time, I was actually a finance major.

"I swear to God, that morning I drove to school and changed my major to accounting. I didn't even think about it because I wanted to be an agent. My family thought I was nuts," he continued.

FBI agents advised Plotzke to go into the business world and gain some more experience, so he did and never looked back.

He worked for Doeren Mayhew, Deloitte and KPMG Advisory.

"Plastipak was actually one of my first clients, and that's how I got exposed to Bill Young, and he made me an offer to come work for him," he said. "What's interesting is I was on board getting my master's [degree], and I actually left Plastipak for a year but stayed on as a consultant, so I went to work for KPMG in their consulting division. And then about a year — almost exactly a year later — I came back full time on board. … At the time I started, we were only about $100 million in revenue, and today we are about $3 billion."

He started as vice president of finance, then later added the CFO and treasurer titles.

Plotzke, who has been with the company for nearly 35 years, said his biggest obstacles are dealing with the "volatility of world markets [and] world economies," political stages, health care costs, and recruiting and retaining talent. His focus is on looking at ways to run more efficiently, control costs, "exploit our technology and grow our markets more organically."

Plotzke belongs to the Michigan Association of Certified Public Accountants and American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

He has been the chairman of the board of Walsh College, where he graduated from with a bachelor's degree in accounting and master's degree in taxation, for about 11 years, and he is on the executive, governance and academic committees. He has been on the board for roughly five years at Eaton Academy, where his daughter attended school.

Plotzke said the organization that might be "nearest and dearest" to his heart is Rainbow Connection, which he has been involved with for nearly 30 years. The group grants wishes to Michigan children with life-threatening medical conditions and provides support to families with financial difficulties. Plotzke is chairman of the annual golf outing.

Plotzke lives in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., with his wife, Courtney, and daughters Ashley, 26; Haley, 21; Madeleine, 11; and Abigail, 9.

In his free time, Plotzke enjoys working out and playing golf. He is also a "die-hard" baseball and hockey fan.

Going on 11 years now, Plotzke is a Distinguished Clown in the Thanksgiving Day parade in downtown Detroit. He got involved through a friend and said he enjoys making people happy and getting in a good workout along the parade route.

Plotzke was nominated for CFO of the Year by Kyle Fleischhacker, manager of creative development for Plastipak. Fleischhacker said Plotzke is "able to deliver results while keeping a smile on everyone's face in the office" and described him as a "very approachable CFO."

Plotzke said his father always talked about being nice to others and passed along that good advice.

"He's really my hero," he said. "When I got this award, I called him and he was almost in tears. He just turned 85. He said, 'I'm just so proud of you.' I said, 'Well, you've taught me a lot.'"