The Great Lakes Tow­ing Com­pa­ny (“Great Lakes”) is proud to announce that it has pur­chased The Wm. Plotz Machine & Forge Com­pa­ny (“Plotz Machine”). The acqui­si­tion includes all Plotz Machine’s assets and real estate.

The acqui­si­tion of Plotz Machine will increase the ser­vices pro­vid­ed by Great Lakes, allow­ing the com­pa­ny to now offer marine and indus­tri­al machine shop ser­vices to all types of cus­tomers, includ­ing its ship­yard new con­struc­tion and ship repair cus­tomers. Great Lakes has retained all employ­ees of Plotz Machine and will sup­ple­ment the enter­prise with admin­is­tra­tive and finan­cial sup­port to help grow Plotz Machine’s cur­rent book of business.

Plotz Machine is a job­bing machine shop, spe­cial­iz­ing in reman­u­fac­tured replace­ment parts for com­mer­cial, munic­i­pal, marine, and indus­tri­al oper­a­tions. Ser­vices include repair and over­haul work on shafts, bear­ings, pumps, motors, valves, cool­ing tow­ers, and ven­ti­la­tion sys­tems, as well as fab­ri­ca­tion of a wide range of pre­ci­sion machined prod­ucts. Plotz Machine’s ser­vices have been uti­lized by both com­mer­cial and gov­ern­ment cus­tomers in the greater Cleve­land area and through­out the Midwest.

Both com­pa­nies have been in con­tin­u­ous busi­ness since the late 1800s and have rich his­to­ries in the City of Cleve­land. “We see many sim­i­lar­i­ties between our two 120+ year old, fam­i­ly owned, Cleve­land based busi­ness­es, and we look for­ward to lever­ag­ing syn­er­gies to cre­ate long-term val­ue for the col­lec­tive ben­e­fit of both busi­ness­es, our cus­tomers, and our city,” says Joe Star­ck, Pres­i­dent, The Great Lakes Tow­ing Company.

“Our mis­sion has always been to go above and beyond for our cus­tomers, and con­tin­u­al­ly improve on-time deliv­er­ies and ser­vice, at a com­pet­i­tive cost, with the same high qual­i­ty our cus­tomers expect. We believe this tran­si­tion will help us con­tin­ue to do just that.” – Tom Plotz, Pres­i­dent, The Wm. Plotz Machine & Forge Company.

The trans­ac­tion closed on Tues­day, Novem­ber 30, 2021.