Two printers, a soda business and a Dutch brewing partner.

F&N began with two printers. John Fraser and David Chalmers Neave ran a printing business in Singapore, the Singapore and Straits Printing Office, and in 1883 they branched out into aerated water, forming the Singapore and Straits Aerated Water Company, English Wikipedia says. The company today describes the same move as the founders’ step from printing into soft drinks in Southeast Asia, and it still counts 1883 as its founding year.

In 1898 the two businesses were sold to a new public company named Fraser & Neave, the Singapore Free Press reported in January of that year. The Malaysian arm of the group, Fraser & Neave Holdings Bhd, says the company was listed in Singapore that year as Fraser and Neave, Limited, and that by 1913 it had spread across the Malay peninsula and as far as Bangkok and Saigon.

Two partnerships shaped the next century. In 1931 F&N formed a joint venture with the Dutch brewer Heineken: Malayan Breweries Limited, which brewed Tiger Beer and later bought the Archipelago Brewery, maker of Anchor Beer, according to English Wikipedia, citing a 2008 Footprint travel guide. The brewery was renamed Asia Pacific Breweries in 1990. Then in 1936 F&N took the franchise to make and sell Coca-Cola in Singapore, Malaya and Brunei, a date given both by English Wikipedia and by the company’s Malaysian arm. Over the years it added the rights to other international drinks, English Wikipedia says, among them 7-Up, Fanta and Sunkist, sold alongside its own F&N-branded soft drinks.

Condensed milk, an anniversary drink and a dairy name.

Dairy came next. F&N says its dairy business began in 1959, and its Malaysian arm dates its start in sweetened condensed milk to the same year. Today that side of the group sells condensed and evaporated milk under its own names, among them Teapot and Ideal, and under Carnation, which F&N uses in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Thailand under licence from Nestlé, English Wikipedia says.

The best-known F&N brand was born of an anniversary. 100PLUS, an isotonic drink, was launched in Malaysia and Singapore in 1983, and its name marks the hundred years since F&N’s founding, according to the brand’s own Malaysian and Singapore websites as cited by English Wikipedia. A non-carbonated version, 100PLUS Active, followed in 2017, the Singapore market-research site Minime Insights reported. The Malaysian badminton player Lee Chong Wei served as a brand ambassador, according to the Malay Mail in 2010 and an F&N announcement of a contract renewal in December 2018.

A second famous name came by acquisition. Magnolia milk began in Singapore with Cold Storage, which in 1937 set up a dairy farm at Bukit Timah under its managing director, Fred Heron, and sold pasteurised milk under the Magnolia name; the same year Cold Storage formed an ice-cream company with San Miguel of the Philippines, owner of its own Magnolia brand, English Wikipedia says, citing a 2013 history published by ISEAS. F&N’s Malaysian arm says the group acquired Magnolia in 1995; it is sold as F&N Magnolia, and the Philippine Magnolia is a separate brand under different ownership. The Borneo mineral-water brand followed in 2006, and in 2007 the group set up F&N Dairies (Thailand), its Malaysian arm says.

The identity was reworked in the same period. English Wikipedia says F&N in Singapore launched a new logo for its food and beverage business on 27 June 2007, aimed at the wider Asia-Pacific market. Four years later a long partnership ended: the Coca-Cola franchise in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei came to an end on 1 September 2011, English Wikipedia says, and F&N carried on with its own brands, which today include Sarsi, Seasons, Ice Mountain, Fruit Tree, NutriSoy and EST cola.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make food or drink, and all of them come from Indonesia, Singapore or Malaysia: SilverQueen, Garudafood, Nabati, F&N, Marigold, Hup Seng and Gardenia. Food and drink brands from the region in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger food groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A food or drink brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the everyday meal or drink it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factory or grown far beyond the town 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.

From Heineken’s partner to a Thai-controlled food group.

F&N widened its business in the 2000s. It bought into Times Publishing in 1999 and took majority control in 2000, the Business Times reported, adding printing, publishing and bookshops. In 2006 the Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings took a 14.9% stake, The Straits Times reported, and in 2010 Temasek sold that stake to Japan’s Kirin Holdings.

The decisive change came in 2012. In July, ThaiBev raised its holding in F&N to 24.1% by buying shares from the bank OCBC, Channel NewsAsia reported. In August F&N accepted Heineken’s offer for its stake in Asia Pacific Breweries, and on 28 September 2012 shareholders approved the sale, ending its part in Tiger Beer. In September ThaiBev and TCC Assets, both controlled by the Thai businessman Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, had made a cash offer for F&N itself, CNN and Bloomberg reported. Kirin sold its 15% stake to the Thai side in early 2013, Kirin announced, and the BBC reported in February 2013 that Charoen had taken control of about two-thirds of the company. F&N says it marked its 130th anniversary in 2013 and welcomed TCC Group as majority shareholder. In January 2014 it spun off its property arm as Frasers Centrepoint Limited, renamed Frasers Property in 2018, the Nikkei Asian Review reported.

What remains is a food and drink group, still listed in Singapore. F&N names 100PLUS, F&N NutriSoy, F&N Magnolia, EST and Oyoshi as its focus drinks brands and says it employs more than 7,200 people in 12 countries. Much of the making is done by the Malaysian arm, which says it runs 14 plants: 12 in Malaysia, at sites including Shah Alam, Pulau Indah, Bentong, Kuching, Butterworth and Kota Kinabalu, and two in Thailand, at Rojana and Wang Muang. It bought the Sri Nona food companies in 2020 and the snack maker Cocoaland in 2022, broke ground in 2024 on an integrated dairy farm at Gemas in Negeri Sembilan and a plant in Cambodia, and in 2025 received its first dairy heifers from Chile for its F&N AgriValley farm, it says.

For a design guide, F&N shows how a printers’ soda business became a portfolio of household names, from a drink named for a centenary to a milk brand it bought. Compare Yeo’s, the Singapore drinks maker behind its isotonic rival H-TWO-O, and Vitasoy, the Hong Kong soy-milk brand. For this guide we use a cordial red, an isotonic blue and a condensed-milk cream with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep F&N’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.