Tooling Vet Oles Joins ALBA as President, CEO

Rich Oles has joined ALBA Enterprises as the company’s president and CEO, having merged the operations of his former consulting company ROI Group, with those of ALBA. ALBA Enterprises is now jointly owned by Oles and John Dineen, who is now the firm’s CFO. Oles assumed his position on November 1.

This merger expands ALBA’s product and service offering to include injection molding consulting services to ALBA’s existing portfolio of Babyplast Micro Injection Molding Machines, VEGA Hydraulic Cylinders, as well as a broad line of peripherals and mold Components sold under the ALBA brand.

Oles is a 33-year veteran of the tooling, injection molding and hot runner industries, and will focus on client solutions and vendor relationships. 

“From the day I met Rich in May of 2015, I thought he was exactly the type of leader ALBA needed,” said Dineen. “Nearly four years later, and now that he and I have found a way to merge our businesses, I am thrilled he has joined ALBA. More critically, ALBA’s clients and manufacturing partners should be equally happy as Rich brings to ALBA a keen intellect and decades of experience spanning all major injection-molding disciplines; he is a gifted and nimble provider of client solutions. All of ALBA’s various constituents should be very pleased by this move,” he added.

“I’m thrilled to be joining ALBA Enterprises,” said Oles. “ALBA already provides industry-leading products through our partnerships with manufacturers like Babyplast and Vega. These products, along with our own ALBA-developed components and our Quick Knockout Couplers are truly best in class. John and I share a common vision, and that is to drive this business to ever-improving levels of technical capability, service excellence and commercial growth.” 

Oles began his career as a journeyman moldmaker and rose quickly to increasing levels of responsibility. He served as engineering manager for Standard Tool and Die in Stevensville, Mich. From 1999 to 2012 he was North American president and CEO of Softline Corp., a hot runner supplier, and its successor organization, PSG Plastic Service Group. Subsequently, he was director of Molding and Tooling Manager at Stone Plastics, a mid-sized molder focusing on the automotive market. In 2015, he founded the ROI Group, and now as part of ALBA, all of ROI’s injection molding consulting services will be incorporated into ALBA as part of its service offering.