A journalist, an advertising agency and a second start.

Century Tuna is the work of Ricardo S. Po Sr., and his route into canned fish was a long one. The Philippine Star reported in October 2021 that he came to Manila from Guangzhou in 1947, aged 15, with his mother, speaking neither English nor Filipino. He studied industrial chemistry at the University of Santo Tomas but left because of poverty, and began his working life as a journalist on a Chinese-language newspaper in Binondo, Manila’s Chinatown.

He moved from reporting into marketing and advertising, founding Cathay Promotions Advertising Company. Among its clients was the retailer Henry Sy Sr., and, according to The Philippine Star, Cathay Promotions designed the SM logo that the SM Group still uses; the columnist Wilson Lee Flores, writing in PhilSTAR Life in 2020, described it as the blue capital letters SM inside a blue circle. Po later became a stockbroker and lost much of his money in the stock-market crash of 1973, the paper reported.

With what remained, he started again. In 1978 Po founded the business that became Century Pacific, known first for its branded tuna; English Wikipedia says the parent company was set up as Century Canning Corporation, whose main business was distributing and selling canned tuna, sardines and milkfish. Writing in The Philippine Star in 2011, Flores called Po “a pioneer of canning tuna locally when most people then ate imported tuna.” In a 2020 talk recounted by Flores, Po’s son Christopher Po called his father’s career “W-shaped”: a fall, a rise, a second fall and a second, larger rise as the founder of Century Tuna.

Pageant queens, film stars and a fitness search.

Advertising was the founder’s trade before tuna was, and the brand has leaned on famous faces. In his 2011 column for The Philippine Star, Wilson Lee Flores wrote that Po was reportedly among the pioneers of celebrity endorsement in the Philippine consumer market, using the former Miss Universe Gloria Diaz as an endorser. By 2011, Flores listed the company’s endorsers as including Angel Locsin, Phil Younghusband, KC Concepcion, Piolo Pascual, Sarah Geronimo and John Lloyd Cruz. That year the Philippine Marketing Association gave Century Canning its Agora Award as Marketing Company of the Year.

The same column set out how the group’s tuna brands were divided: Century was pitched “a bit upscale,” 555 at the mass market, Fresca at northern Luzon and Blue Bay at the Visayas.

Its best-known marketing property is Century Tuna Superbods, a search in which men and women compete on fitness and physique. The Inquirer’s lifestyle section covered a 2014 edition held on Boracay. In 2022 the models Kirk Bondad and Christelle Abello were named grand winners, PhilSTAR Life reported. By 2024 The Philippine Star was describing the contest as biennial: that April, callbacks at Market! Market! in Taguig narrowed more than a hundred hopefuls to 36 finalists, judged by a panel that included Century Pacific’s chief operating officer, Gregory H. Banzon, and the head of its branded tuna division, Carlo Endaya. In 2026 the contest marked its 20th year, the Manila Bulletin and the Manila Standard reported; that April Century Tuna announced a partnership with the fitness app Strava, according to The Philippine Star. The actress Anne Curtis, linked to the Superbods campaign for about a decade, spoke to the 40 finalists of that year’s “Superbod Era” edition at a VIP night in Makati in July 2026, The Philippine Star reported.

The company’s own website lists awards for the brand, among them Century Tuna as seafood brand of the year for the Philippines at the World Branding Awards in 2019, and recognition for Century Tuna and Argentina in Reader’s Digest’s Trusted Brands surveys from 2011 to 2013 and in 2015 and 2016.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Filipino food brands: Datu Puti, Silver Swan, Mang Tomas, Lucky Me!, Rebisco, Magnolia and Century Tuna. Food brands in the Philippines in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s vision to names that now belong to much larger food groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a neighbourhood sari-sari store to a supermarket shelf.

A food brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the meal or snack it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factory or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A listed food group, a family and a fishing port.

Century Tuna now belongs to Century Pacific Food, Inc., known by its stock ticker CNPF. English Wikipedia says the company was incorporated on 25 October 2013 to bring the group’s food manufacturing under one roof, as a subsidiary of Century Pacific Group, the renamed Century Canning Corporation. In May 2014 the Singapore sovereign fund GIC announced an investment of 3.4 billion pesos in Century Canning, and CNPF was listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange that month. The company’s website shows Century Pacific Group, two other holding companies and a public float above CNPF in its corporate structure. Its head office is in the Ortigas Center in Pasig, Metro Manila.

The group has grown well beyond tuna. Its portfolio includes Argentina corned beef, 555 sardines and Birch Tree milk; in 2017 it bought the Philippine rights to Hunt’s from Universal Robina, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported, and in December 2021 The Philippine Star reported that the Po family would acquire the Ligo sardines brand. It also makes coconut products, and in March 2024 The Manila Times reported an extended supply deal with the coconut-water brand Vita Coco. Ricardo Po Sr. died in October 2021, aged 90, Rappler and The Philippine Star reported; his sons remain in the business, and in 2026 BusinessWorld identified Christopher T. Po as executive chairman.

Much of the production sits in General Santos City, the Mindanao fishing port. When a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the area on 8 June 2026, Century Pacific suspended operations at its General Santos facilities, BusinessWorld reported, describing the company as the maker of Century Tuna, Argentina, 555, Ligo and Birch Tree and a supplier of private-label tuna and coconut products for export. By the end of June, Christopher Po told reporters, operations were close to normal; he said the General Santos facilities support about 13,000 jobs.

For a design guide, Century Tuna shows how an advertising man’s instinct for famous faces can carry a can of fish from a 1978 start-up to a national fitness contest. Compare John West, the canned-fish name that crossed from Oregon salmon to Liverpool, and Princes, the Liverpool importer that became a listed food group. For this guide we use a deep sea blue, a tin red and a sun yellow with a sturdy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Century Tuna’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.