Manuel Cojuangco — Co-Founder of Jewelmer and Father of Filipino Golden Pearls
Manuel Cojuangco — Co-Founder of Jewelmer and Father of Filipino Golden Pearls
The Philippine entrepreneur who, with Jacques Branellec, established golden South Sea pearl culture as a distinct luxury category
Manuel C. Cojuangco was the Philippine co-founder of Jewelmer International Corporation, the company that pioneered the commercial cultivation of golden South Sea pearls in the Philippines and established the country as one of the world's leading producers of high-quality cultured pearls. Together with French-born pearl technician Jacques Branellec, Cojuangco founded Jewelmer in 1979 and built the operation through several decades of careful technical development and brand building. The result transformed a country with no significant pearl-farming history into a major producer of one of the most distinctive South Sea pearl categories.
Origins of Jewelmer
The Cojuangco family is one of the prominent Filipino business families with extensive interests across multiple sectors of the Philippine economy. Manuel Cojuangco's involvement in pearl farming began in the late 1970s, when he partnered with Jacques Branellec — a French pearl technician with experience in Polynesian pearl culture — to explore the potential of the Philippine archipelago's waters for South Sea pearl production. The partnership combined Branellec's technical expertise with the Cojuangco family's business resources and Philippine market access.
The choice of Palawan as the principal farming location was significant. The Palawan archipelago in the western Philippines includes thousands of small islands, atolls, and protected bays, with water conditions in the optimal range for Pinctada maxima, the gold-lipped pearl oyster that produces South Sea pearls. The islands are relatively undeveloped, with limited industrial pollution and adequate freshwater inputs to maintain salinity in the appropriate range.
Developing golden South Sea pearl culture
The Philippine archipelago is the centre of natural distribution of the gold-lipped Pinctada maxima variety, which produces pearls with the characteristic golden body colour. While the species occurs throughout the South Pacific, the gold colour expression is most strongly developed in Philippine waters, and Jewelmer's operation focused on producing pearls of intense golden colour as the company's distinguishing offering. The combination of locality, donor selection, and farming practice over decades produced a category — Philippine golden South Sea pearls — that is now recognised in the international pearl trade as distinct from the white South Sea pearls dominant in Australian production.
Technical development required years of experimentation with grafting protocols, donor selection, environmental management, and quality control. The Branellec-Cojuangco partnership invested in the gradual refinement of these elements through the 1980s and 1990s, developing proprietary techniques that produced consistently high-quality golden pearls. The operation also expanded to multiple farm sites in Palawan and to additional locations as the industry grew.
Brand building and market positioning
Beyond technical pearl production, Jewelmer under Cojuangco's leadership developed a distinctive brand and retail presence that positioned Philippine golden pearls as a luxury category alongside Tahitian black and Australian white South Sea pearls. The company opened retail boutiques in Manila and other major Asian cities, marketed pearls through international jewellery shows, and worked with the Philippine government to develop industry recognition for the country's pearl production. The Philippine national gem is the South Sea pearl, designated by the government in 1996, reflecting the industry's economic and cultural significance.
The branding strategy emphasised the natural origin of the golden colour — produced by the gold-lipped oyster's nacre chemistry rather than by post-harvest treatment — and the quality control implicit in long-term farm-to-retail integration. This positioning differentiated Jewelmer's product from coloured-treated pearls and from undifferentiated commercial South Sea production.
Industry context and broader impact
The Philippine pearl industry now includes multiple producers operating across the archipelago, with Jewelmer remaining the largest and most visible international brand. Other significant Philippine pearl operations include Branellec's continuing work and several smaller specialty farms. The industry contributes meaningfully to Palawan's economy and supports a network of skilled grafting technicians, farm workers, and ancillary trades. Cojuangco's role in establishing the industry as a serious international category is widely recognised within the Philippine pearl trade.
Manuel Cojuangco died in 2024, ending a decades-long association with the company he co-founded. Leadership of Jewelmer has continued under successor management, with the brand maintaining its position as the principal Philippine golden pearl producer in the international luxury market.
In the trade
For trade buyers, the Cojuangco-Branellec partnership at Jewelmer is the case study in building a national pearl-production category from initial concept to established international position. Philippine golden South Sea pearls are now a recognised category in the trade, with pricing structures, grading conventions, and brand recognition that did not exist when Jewelmer was founded. The legacy is visible in any retail offering that includes Philippine golden pearls and in the broader market acceptance of golden as a legitimate body colour rather than a product of treatment.