Russ LaBelle, founder of Wilmington Machinery, dies at 86

Russ LaBelle, founder of Wilmington Machinery, died Nov. 11, 2025, at the age of 86. 

“My passion is to conceive, design and build machines that perform well. I’m a good listener and I have a can-do attitude, but I’m also flexible and willing to explore options and other possibilities. My career followed a series of lucky steps along the way. Experience helps a lot,” LaBelle told Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing (PMM) in a 2019 profile.

He had sold his company to a private investor in January and stepped away from the business. The blow molding and injection molding machinery (IMM) maker now operates as Wilmington Machinery LLC.

According to his obituary, he was born April 10, 1939, in Otsego, Mich., and grew up in Muskegon, Mich., where he attended Muskegon County Community College until he was drafted into the U.S. Army.

He graduated from Western Michigan University with a degree in engineering in 1956 and worked for Fabri-Kal Corp., National Rubber Machinery and Extruders Inc. before starting his company. 

He was “fascinated by structural injection foam molding,” as he told PMM in 2019, and moved to North Carolina in 1972 with $10,000 and an idea to build IMMs to serve the furniture industry. He launched Wilmington Machinery in 1973, leveraging a background in engineering to fill a need for specialized plastic machinery solutions that have been adopted by companies around the world. 

The company’s IMMs for high-output production of large structural foam parts enable manufacturers to make high-performance components for industries such as automotive, packaging and consumer goods.

Wilmington entered the extrusion blow molding market in the early 1980s with rotary blow molding machines. 

LaBelle emphasized sustainability in his machines, including energy efficiency, material conservation and the ability to process recycled materials.

He also developed customized machinery solutions, understanding that no two customers’ needs were identical: “Our success has been our ability to attract customers who wanted to do something better or different than commodity machinery allowed them to do,” he told PMM. 

Survivors include his life partner of 40 years, Michael Townsend Jones; two sisters, and 12 nieces and nephews. 

A Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated at St. Therese Catholic Church, 209 S. Lumina Ave., Wrightsville Beach, N.C, at noon on Dec. 2, 2025. Interment will be at St. Mary's Cemetery in Muskegon at a later date. 

Asked how he would like to be remembered, he replied, “As a lucky person who had the privilege of working with the who’s who of the molders and jointly doing some exciting things.”