A Lagos conglomerate, a roll and a South African partner.

Gala is a sausage roll, and it belongs to one of Nigeria’s oldest companies. The brand dates from 1962: BusinessDay reported in March 2025 that Gala was originally launched that year, and a month earlier the newspaper quoted Oluyemi Oloyede, chief executive of UAC Foods, describing Gala as a “62-year-old” brand.

Its owner, UAC of Nigeria Plc, traces its roots to 1879, when it began as a trading company, BusinessDay reported in February 2025. Four companies trading on the River Niger merged as the Royal Niger Company in 1880, and the United Africa Company was formed in 1920 from the African and Eastern Trade Corporation and the Niger Company. English Wikipedia gives the Nigerian company’s incorporation as Nigerian Motors Ltd in 1931, followed by a string of renamings: United Africa Company Ltd in 1943, the United Africa Company of Nigeria Ltd in 1955, UAC (Unilever) of Nigeria in 1973 and UACN Plc in 1991. BusinessDay describes the company as formerly part of Unilever; English Wikipedia says Nigerian investors took 40% of the shares in 1974 and 60% by 1977, and that Unilever sold its remaining minority stake to local investors in 1994.

The modern company behind the roll is younger than the roll itself. UAC says UAC Foods Ltd was formed in 2010 through a partnership with South Africa’s Tiger Brands, and Nairametrics reported that Tiger Brands bought a 49% stake in UAC’s food and beverage business in 2011, under an arrangement to make and distribute Gala sausage rolls, Supreme ice cream and Swan water.

Street snack, generic name, bigger rolls.

Gala’s reach is visible in the language. In October 2021 Premium Times listed Gala among ten brands that Nigerians use as generic names, alongside Indomie, Maggi and Close Up: it called Gala the first sausage roll sold in large quantities in Nigeria, said many Nigerians call every sausage roll “Gala,” and noted that buyers who want the real thing ask vendors for “Original Gala.” BusinessDay wrote in 2025 that Gala had become a household staple by the late 1990s and early 2000s, sold in Lagos traffic jams and often eaten with a bottled soft drink, with a following among secondary-school and university students.

The roll has also changed size more than once. In November 2016 BusinessDay reported that UAC Foods was introducing Gala Mega, a bigger, meatier version sold alongside the regular roll, quoting Joan Ihekwaba, UAC Foods’ general manager for marketing, who said the regular Gala would stay on sale. According to the newspaper’s 2025 account, both versions later shrank and Gala Mega eventually left the market.

Competition grew in the same period. BusinessDay named Rite Foods’ Rite and Bigi sausage rolls, Superbite from Chi and Yum Yum from Food Concepts as rivals that gained share between 2015 and 2023, while Gala gradually lost its dominance. In 2023 UAC Foods appointed Oluyemi Oloyede, who had worked at Procter & Gamble, L’Oréal, Kellogg’s and Kerry, as chief executive, and one of his first moves was a “King of the Streets” campaign for Gala, the newspaper reported.

New products followed. UAC Foods launched Gala Chin Chin, a brand extension, in August 2024, Oloyede told BusinessDay, and the company relaunched its Kingsway bread. In February 2025 it brought out a larger Gala roll of 120 grams, against 65 grams for the roll now called the “old Gala”; BusinessDay noted that, unlike Gala Mega, the new roll carried no special branding.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make food or drink, and all of them come from Ghana, Ethiopia or Nigeria: Nkulenu, Kasapreko, Dashen, Star, Hollandia, Chivita and Gala. Food and drink brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s surname to names that now belong to much larger groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a roadside kiosk 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 meal or moment 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.

A buy-back, three factory towns and a new sister brand.

The Tiger Brands partnership ended a decade after it began. In August 2021 Tiger Brands agreed to sell its minority stake in UAC Foods to UAC of Nigeria, Nairametrics reported, citing a notice on the Nigerian Exchange; UAC says the purchase was completed on 1 September 2021, making UAC Foods a wholly owned subsidiary. UAC today describes itself as a holding company, and lists UAC Foods’ brands as Gala, Supreme, Swan and Funtime.

Gala is made in Nigeria. UAC says UAC Foods has production facilities in the country’s South West and North Central regions, and BusinessDay reported in February 2025 that the company makes Gala sausage rolls, Gala Chin Chin, Kingsway pastry rolls, Supreme ice cream, Funtime coconut chips and Swan spring water in Lagos, Abeokuta and Ibadan.

In 2025 Gala gained sister brands. Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission approved UAC’s purchase of CHI Limited, the maker of Chivita juice and Hollandia dairy, BusinessDay reported in October 2025, after the two sides announced their agreement on 30 July 2025. Coca-Cola had bought 40% of CHI in 2016 and taken full ownership in 2019, the newspaper said.

For a design guide, Gala shows how a single wrapped snack can turn its brand name into the everyday word for a whole category. Compare CHI Limited, its new stablemate under UAC, and Ginsters, the Cornish pasty and sausage-roll bakery. For this guide we use a roll red, a pastry gold and a flaky cream with a heavy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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