A review of his 40-year career in Amoy Food: started his career at the very bottom, strong sense of beginning remained unchanged

Cheng Yum Kwai joined Amoy in 1966 and has now been working with the company for over 45 years. While still a youngster, he started his career at the very bottom and gradually worked his way up to become manager of the engineering department. Amoy’s managers were often specially recruited from outside, and internal promotion of employees like Cheng Yum Kwai was very rare. Always modest, Cheng Yum Kwai often mocked himself as having the lowest academic qualification among all Amoy managers. Today, he says that he feels fortunate that even though Amoy has changed ownership several times, he has always received generous remunerative treatment from each new investor. As a result, his sense of loyalty to Amoy endures to this day.

On the eve of the Hang Lung Group’s buying into Amoy, Cheng Yum Kwai was vice chairman of the Staff Welfare Association. When the Sime Darby Group sold its shares to Hang Lung, the founding owners Cheng and Huang families were not informed of it. The majority of employees disapproved Hang Lung’s acquisition. Representing the Staff Welfare Association, Cheng Yum Kwai negotiated with Hang Lung’s directors and conveyed the views and emotion of the staff. When Hang Lung eventually took over Amoy, Cheng Yum Kwa iworried that his new employer might fire him because of this. Happily, Hang Lung’s directors chose to bury the hatchet, forget old grudges and give trust to Cheng Yum Kwai. So much so that they eventually promoted him to important management positions in both 1982 and 1984. Cheng Yum Kwai has always been diligent about meeting his responsibilities over the years and has never been lazy. He repeatedly attended training courses arranged by Amoy and learned a lot of management knowledge and life skills. He also inspected different plants to gain more experiences, occasionally visiting Amoy’s mainland plants, and sometimes even touring competitive companies’ facilities.

Interviewee
Company Amoy Food Limited
Date
Subject Industry
Duration 8m50s
Language Cantonese
Material Type
Collection
Source Hong Kong Memory Project Oral History Interview
Repository Hong Kong Memory Project
Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project
Accession No. LKF-CYK-SEG-012
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