A Lower Mainland industrial firm is suing its former managing director, as well as his family and a competing firm, over claims that he took confidential information, and poached clients before and after leaving his job.
AFX Mixing and Pumping Technologies, which was based in Maple Ridge, sued Shaune McKinon, his wife and two children, as well as their family company Macworx, in B.C. Supreme Court starting on May 30, 2025.
AFX accused McKinon of breaches of fiduciary duty, trust, and contract, and all the defendants of conspiracy and unjust enrichment.
Specifically, the company claims that he secretly went into business with AFX’s main international competitor, a company called Mixtec, even before he had stepped down from his job as AFX’s managing director, and that he transferred large amounts of company data that allowed him to later compete for AFX clients.
McKinon’s son, Kent, operates Macworx, and the company is on retainer to distribute Mixtec products inside Canada as of last spring.
McKinon has countersued his former employer for “constructive dismissal and shareholder oppression,” claiming that he was stripped of his authority, responsibilities, and income at AFX starting in early 2025, and that the company did not offer him fair value for the shares he owned in the company.
None of the claims has yet been proven in a court of law, and a trial is not scheduled until April 2027. But a recent ruling by Justice Simon Coval revealed details of the legal dispute.
In laying out the reasons for his most recent ruling, Coval wrote that AFX was incorporated in Canada in 2014, with McKinon as its managing director. It is 20 per cent owned by McKinon, and 80 per cent owned by its South African parent company.
The local firm was the North American hub for sales and distribution of sophisticated industrial mixing and pumping equipment, as well as offering maintenance and parts services to clients.
McKinon’s wife, son, and daughter also worked for AFX at various times up to 2024.
In January 2025, McKinon told AFX he wanted to leave, but attempts to negotiate a buyout of his shares failed. He was removed as a director on April 8.
The new manager of AFX took over, and allegedly discovered that McKinon had been working with Macworx while still at AFX, “including sending information such as AFX copyrighted customer equipment designs and drawings to Macworx by email as long ago as September 2019,” Coval wrote.
The court has also heard that AFX’s IT contractor was told by McKinon to export a copy of his company email account, and the entire AFX server and passwords, last spring so McKinon would have them after leaving the company.
McKinon told the court he is not involved in Macworx’s business except for “technical communications,” but he had a company email address starting in 2019.
As far as Mixtec, McKinon gave evidence in 2025 saying that they had contacted him about a month after he left AFX, and they had negotiated an agreement in May 2025.
But Mixtec itself gave the court documents that showed they had been negotiating as early as mid-December 2024, and that McKinon had made two trips to Salt Lake City to meet with Mixtec, in January and March 2025. He had a Mixtec company email on March 26, 2025, and Macworx received its first retainer payment from Mixtec on April 3.
“The current record appears to indicate that, while still a director, he: (a) negotiated and signed the Mixtec Agreement to go into business with AFX’s primary competitor; (b) sent AFX’s software output containing technical client information to Mixtec (March 23, 2025); (c) ordered parts for a client from Mixtec rather than AFX; and (d) departed with copies of his AFX email account and the company hard drive; and (e) concealed all of this from AFX until revealed in this litigation,” Coval wrote in his most recent interim ruling.
This added up to a “strong initial case” against McKinon, the judge wrote.
Coval has now ruled on two requests for injunctions by AFX against McKinon.
On Aug. 28, 2025, Coval granted a temporary injunction against McKinon and the other defendants to prevent them from using, selling, or distributing 10 categories of AFX data and documents, and to return all copies of them within 10 days.
AFX sought a second injunction, banning McKinon and Macworx from doing business with AFX’s clients until the trial in a year and a half.
Coval refused to issue that injunction. He said that he could only issue that type of injunction if AFX faced “irreparable harm,” and it had not been established that the stricter injunction was necessary after the first one was already in place.
AFX moved from its Maple Ridge location to a new site in Surrey in mid-2025. Macworx is still located in the Kanaka Business Park in Maple Ridge, a short walk from AFX’s old office.
A legal representative of Macworx said they were pleased with Coval’s ruling on the second injunction and grateful that they have not been constrained from doing business.
Black Press Media reached out to AFX as well, but they did not comment.