Business View - August 2015 59
14-plant enterprise in 2007, when he purchased PW
Eagle, which, at the time, was the second largest plas-
tic pipe manufacturer. Today, JM Eagle, headquartered
in Los Angeles, dominates the market, and is one of a
few companies in the industry that produces a full line
of both PVC and PE products.
But JM Eagle is a corporation whose products not
only benefit its bottom line, but according to its CEO,
Walter Wang, also “play a vital role in improving and
maintaining health and quality of life throughout the
world.” That passionate expression of JM Eagle’s mis-
sion statement is echoed by Neal Gordon, the com-
pany’s Vice President of Marketing. “The real story
on JM Eagle has to do with our reason for being,” he
explains. “We have a motto for our company: ‘Build-
ing Essentials for a Better Tomorrow.’ I really love that
motto because it’s a living, breathing part of who we
are as a company. We have a very strong philosophy of
doing what’s right for the world.”
To that end, JM Eagle has sponsored many philan-
thropic projects in countries around the globe. Its cen-
terpiece infrastructure project was developed in tan-
dem with the United Nations, Columbia University, and
the Earth Institute. For it, the company donated over
400 miles of plastic pipe to bring clean, potable water
to more than 300,000 people in eight countries in the
Sub-Saharan region of Africa. Gordon talks about the
immediate and subsequent results of that one initia-
tive: “So, in areas of extreme poverty, we’ve provided
engineers and the materials to build and deliver clean,
healthy water to people, who, in the past, had no fu-
ture. Now, not only do they have water, which is the
very basis of life, they also have medical facilities, edu-
cational facilities, and economic facilities.”
In Thailand, JM Eagle helped build an irrigation system
for the people of Santisuk, andmade possible a system
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
JM Eagle
WHAT:
The leading manufacturer of PVC and PE
plastic pipe
WHERE:
Headquarters in Los Angeles, Califor-
nia
WEBSITE
:
MANUFACTURING
