A fishing group before a cannery.

Mega began on the water, not in a can. The company history published by Mega Prime Foods dates the business to 1975, with “early fishing days” in the Bicol region of Luzon and the founding of Wilmar Fishing. A March 2025 statement from the company names its founder as William Tiu Lim and describes the business as having grown from “humble beginnings as a fishing group” into a food company with a portfolio of brands.

Twenty years on, the company says, the fishing group moved south to Zamboanga, in western Mindanao, and began supplying fresh fish to canneries based in Manila. That was in 1995, when it took the name Mega Fishing Corporation. At that stage Mega caught fish for other companies’ cans; its own brand had not yet reached the shelf.

That changed at the end of the decade. In 1998, according to the company timeline, Mega began building a canning plant at Ayala, in Zamboanga City, which started operating in 2000 as Ayala Seafoods Corporation. The same year the company entered the canned-sardine business and launched Mega Sardines, pitched as the “freshest sardines in a can” on the strength of what it calls its catching-to-canning process. A second canning plant, at Talisayan, also in Zamboanga, followed in 2012, the company says, and in 2014 the business was renamed Mega Global Corporation “to reflect its quest for globalization.”

The family still runs it. In 2023 William Tiu Lim’s daughter, Michelle Tiu Lim-Chan, was appointed president and chief executive, the company said in March 2025; its leadership page lists her alongside Malcolm, Marvin and Mark Tiu Lim in chief-officer roles. In July 2025 the company marked what it called its 50th year with a new employer-branding campaign for its staff.

A boat on the can.

Mega’s marketing has leaned on the fishing fleet behind the product. Its first advertising campaign, in 2003, was “Tatak Barko, Tatak Sariwa” — roughly “the boat brand, the fresh brand” — and featured the actor Cesar Montano, according to the company timeline. The idea that the fish go quickly from boat to can has stayed at the centre of the brand: the company now promotes a 12-hour catching-to-canning process, which it lists among its innovations of 2011 alongside fish pumps, chilled sea water and what it calls the first sardines in an easy-open can. It also says Mega Sardines was the first brand to sell sardines in an easy-tear pouch, in 2006. These are the company’s own claims.

The brand has also bought airtime in Philippine entertainment television. A game segment called “Guess the Presyo, Get the Premyo!”, sponsored by Mega Sardines, made its debut on the noontime variety show Wowowee on 19 November 2007, English Wikipedia records. On its product page today the brand’s Filipino line is “Sarap, Sustansya at Saya,” promised in every can.

Market position is another thing the company advertises. It says Mega Sardines became the leading sardine brand in the Philippines in an AC Nielsen retail audit of 2015, and remained so in Kantar Worldpanel figures for 2020. In 2019 it launched what it called the first National Sardines Day, on 24 November.

Away from advertising, the company has built a visitor attraction around the same story: a Mega Sardines museum called Senses of the Sea, which its website describes as an interactive exhibit on the catching-to-canning process, aimed partly at school groups.

Fleets, family firms and pantry staples.

The seven brands in this group are food and drink brands from the Philippines and Thailand: Jack ’n Jill, Ligo, Mega, Oishi, Goldilocks, Lactasoy and Dutch Mill. Food and drink brands 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 neighbourhood store 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 snack, 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 sardines to a pantry.

Sardines remain the anchor, but Mega has spread across the pantry. The company timeline lists Mega Tuna in 2015; canned fruit and vegetables under the Mega Prime name, as “Mega Prime Quality,” in 2017; a Mega Prime Choices line of sauces and noodles in 2018; and, in 2021, Primo Sparkling Juice, its first drink, together with a Mega Premium range that started with frozen seafood and an online store, MegamartPH. Its website also lists Mega Mackerel, and the company said in 2025 that it had acquired Jimm’s Coffee.

The corporate structure changed as the range grew. In 2022 the company introduced Mega Prime Foods Inc. as Mega Global Corporation’s largest subsidiary, the business that now makes Mega Sardines, and in 2023 it opened a manufacturing plant in Batangas, south of Manila. A distribution centre in Valenzuela, in Metro Manila, had opened in 2019, according to the timeline. In July 2025 the company described business units at Cawit, Talisayan and Ayala in Zamboanga, alongside the Batangas plant.

The company also ties its fleet to its environmental work: under the Mega Ocean Clean-Up, it says, nets are attached to its boats to bring rubbish from the sea floor back to land.

The name is shared with unrelated businesses: the Philippine publisher Mega Global Licensing and the cloud-storage service MEGA have no connection with the sardine maker.

For a design guide, Mega shows how a fishing fleet can become the brand story itself, with the boat and the speed of the catch carried from the first campaign to a museum. Compare Century Tuna, the Manila canner founded in 1978, and Ligo, another sardine brand on Philippine shelves. For this guide we use a deep sea blue, a tomato red and a can silver with a bold sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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