PRODUCTS FINISHING — pfonline.com
11
Linetec's Scott Platta
Calls it a Career
By Jess Larkin, Assistant Editor
Afer a 40-year
career as founder
and former presi-
dent of Wausau,
Wisconsin-based
aluminum fnisher
Linetec, Scott
Platta has retired
and come full
circle back to
where he started: hunting, fshing and
riding snowmobiles.
Born and raised in northern Wisconsin,
Platta's father and grandfather were sure
to get him into the great outdoors at an
early age. And that's how Platta plans to
spend his retirement —out on his land,
hunting, fshing and fnishing his cabin.
"I'm an avid sportsman," Platta says.
"I fsh a lot, I hunt a lot. I go to extremes. I
grew up that way. Of course, my mother-
in-law thinks I'm crazy."
Platta founded Linetec in 1983 with
a single paint line of only 20 employees
in a 40,000-square-foot building. Today,
Linetec is the nation's largest independent
architectural fnisher, providing paint and
anodized fnishing services for products
such as windows, curtainwalls, entrances,
hardware and other components.
Platta put Linetec on the map in the
early 1980s with a range of high-perfor-
mance Kynar colored paint for architec-
tural products, especially windows, a
service not many companies ofered at
that time. Platta saw potential in the archi-
tectural coatings market, and by 1982, he
was networking and researching equip-
ment for his business.
In the early 1990s, Linetec was one of
the frst fnishers with a thermal oxidizer.
The oxidizer eliminates harmful chemicals
prior to their release into the atmosphere,
while operating 98.8 percent air-pollution-
free. This gave the company more leeway
to apply high-performance liquid paint
coatings, a marketplace advantage.
In 1999, Linetec provided part of its
factory space to help incubate a PVC fabri-
cation business, Polywood Fabrication.
Platta continued to manage Polywood
continued on p. 12
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