A seafood buyer on the far north coast of California.

Wild Planet grew out of an older seafood business. In a post on the company’s blog marking its twentieth anniversary, its founder Bill Carvalho writes that he started Carvalho Fisheries in 1990 to buy and distribute seafood from local fishermen in Northern California, later extending its sourcing into Oregon. He describes a family habit behind it: albacore tuna bought from the boats at Eureka and canned at home in Mason jars, a practice he says began with his Portuguese grandmother. By his account he was exporting tuna to Spain by 1998, and he launched a brand called Carvalho Family Albacore, which he showed at the San Francisco Fancy Food Show in 2001.

The company tells its turning point as a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where Carvalho saw an exhibit about overfishing that its anniversary timeline calls “Oceans in Crisis.” The dates in the company’s own telling have moved: the current timeline places the visit in 2001, while the About page as archived in March 2021 said it happened in 2004. Either way, the company says he then turned Carvalho Fisheries towards selective, sustainable harvesting.

The Wild Planet brand was introduced in 2004, according to the company’s timeline, which says its first product was a wild albacore tuna. Bolton’s 2021 acquisition announcement also dates the company’s inception to 2004 and calls Carvalho its president and founder. One earlier account differs: a Whole Foods Market supplier profile published in March 2012 said Carvalho had co-founded Wild Planet with Bill McCarthy in 2003. The company is based in McKinleyville, California, according to the dateline and boilerplate of its September 2026 press release.

Pole and line, Seafood Watch and a single cook.

Sourcing is the centre of the brand’s story. The company’s timeline says that in 2005 it began working with the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch programme and committed to buying only from fisheries the programme rated Green or Yellow. Its tuna, the company says, is caught by pole and line; the 2012 Whole Foods Market profile described the tuna as caught one fish at a time by pole and line or by trolling, and the sardines and salmon as netted in schools of a single species. “We follow the fish all the way from the hook to the consumers’ plate,” the profile quoted the company as saying.

Wild Planet also describes how the tuna reaches the can. On its catch-to-can page it says the fish are frozen aboard the boat and taken to its processing facility, where the loins are cleaned, trimmed and hand-packed into cans or pouches with a little sea salt, then cooked once in their own packaging. The same page mentions salmon cannery partners in Bristol Bay, Alaska, which the company says it has visited.

The range widened in steps. The company’s timeline adds canned salmon from small-scale Alaskan fishing families in 2008, sardines in 2010 — presented as a way to eat lower on the food chain — and a traceability partnership with Trace Register in 2012. Ready-to-eat tuna salads followed in 2021, and smoked salmon and smoked mackerel in 2023. Today the company lists tuna, sardines, salmon and mackerel among its seafood, alongside yellowtail and anchovies, and it also sells chicken and beef, which it says come from organic partners.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all tinned-fish names, from brands based in Spain, Italy and the United States: Matiz, Palacio de Oriente, Albo, Rio Mare, Mare Aperto, AsdoMAR and Wild Planet. Tinned-fish brands sit at many different points in the trade, from family canneries that still carry a founder’s name to labels that belong to much larger food groups, and the same name can appear on a delicatessen shelf and in a supermarket aisle. Two of the seven share an owner: Italy’s Bolton Group, based in Milan, lists both Rio Mare and Wild Planet among its food brands, having announced its acquisition of Wild Planet in August 2021.

A tinned-fish brand’s identity is carried less by the fish than by the tin: its label, its colours, its name and the place it promises. The company behind a name may have changed hands, moved its canning or bought its fish from far away, which makes the plain questions worth asking: who started the brand, who owns it now, and where its fish is caught, packed and canned.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its fish is processed and how its tins and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

An Italian owner and an ocean-and-leaf logo.

On 22 August 2021, Italy’s Bolton Group announced that it had acquired Wild Planet Foods. Bolton said it would retain the Wild Planet name and invest in the company’s growth, and quoted its executive chairwoman Marina Nissim welcoming Wild Planet “into our family.” Just Food reported on 31 August 2021 that the financial terms were not disclosed and that the deal came two years after Bolton bought the US tuna supplier Tri Marine; ESM Magazine described Bolton as a family business founded by Joseph Nissim and said Carvalho would continue to lead Wild Planet. Bolton, based in Milan, lists Wild Planet among its food brands alongside Rio Mare, Saupiquet, Isabel and Palmera.

The name carries the brand’s argument. “I chose the name Wild Planet because it communicates that our planet in its wildest state is the most balanced and productive,” Carvalho was quoted as saying on the company’s About page in 2021. In a release dated 17 September 2026, the company announced a portfolio-wide packaging redesign with a revamped ocean-and-leaf logo and a colour-coded system organised by species, packing liquid and flavour. It said the new cans add a “Premium” designation, give priority to “Wild-Caught” messaging and carry a signature fish pattern around the bottom of every can. Sue Thanavaro, the brand marketing director, said the refreshed look brings “a vibrant, sophisticated presence to the shelf.” The redesign launched alongside a campaign called Lunch Offline, which began with a pop-up in Seattle on 15 September 2026.

For a design guide, Wild Planet shows how a sourcing story can become a visual system, with the ocean-and-leaf mark and colour coding doing the work of explaining a shelf of similar tins. Compare its Italian stablemate Rio Mare and the illustrated tins of the American brand Fishwife. For this guide we use Pacific blue, leaf green and sea foam with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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