#9 | 5 at 50 Winners Miniseries: Entrepreneur Joe Ng

Joe Ng, Founder and Chairman of The JNE Group of Companies, is a winner in CCBC’s 5 at 50 Entrepreneurs category. He founded Joe Ng Engineering in 1980, offering engineering design and consulting services to large steel companies in North America. When the steel industry went into a rut during the 1982 recession, he had to look elsewhere for business and explored China’s potential.

Key takeaways from Joe:

• His 1982 visit to China was a small step that ballooned into three 10-year expansion plans over 30 years. He noticed China’s Five-Year Plan but figured his company was too small for five-year plans, thus the 10-year plans.
• His first 10 years involved matching China’s needs with Canada’s capabilities, making use of Canadian factories idled by the recession by moving them to China. This involved taking apart a plant in one country and reassembling it in another. All three plants are still in operation.
• In his second 10 years, he worked on infrastructure projects enabled by Canadian development financing – projects that brought benefit to Canada by requiring purchases of Canadian products.
• As China developed, its needs changed, and in the third 10-year plan, he found a need for Canadian project management on Chinese-led international projects. Canadian engineers could communicate and better understand safety and process requirements.
• How to develop good business relationships (and not drink too much maotai) – JNE became well-known for only accepting projects that yielded adequate return. This earned him the respect of his counterparts. It’s crucial to really understand your bottom line going in. Don’t fall into a trap of losing money the first time; there will be no second time.
• Philanthropy he’s most proud of – endowing the JNE Chair of Infrastructure Design at McMaster University.