KEY POINTS

• Nigeria’s top 10 FMCG companies carried N1.96 trillion in combined debt in 2025, despite high interest rates and naira pressure.
• Dangote Sugar Refinery led the debt list at N725.31 billion, while Nestle Nigeria reduced borrowings 27 percent yet faces an alarming debt-to-equity ratio of 65.64 times.
• Nigerian Breweries cut debt 65 percent and moved into net cash, alongside International Breweries, Unilever and NASCON.

Nigeria’s 10 largest fast-moving consumer goods companies carried a combined N1.96 trillion in debt at the end of 2025, with Dangote Sugar Refinery topping the table at N725.31 billion and Nestle Nigeria close behind despite an aggressive deleveraging drive.

The audited 2025 full-year filings show an industry split between heavily indebted operators leaning on borrowings to absorb soaring input costs and a smaller group of firms that paid down balance sheets and built cash reserves through the year.

Now the divergence matters because the cost of new debt has become punishing in Nigeria, with the Central Bank holding its monetary policy rate at 26.5 percent for much of 2025 in an effort to tame inflation.

Top of the pile

Specifically, Dangote Sugar Refinery’s total borrowings nudged up 1.09 percent from N717.51 billion a year earlier. Net debt stood at N672.73 billion and the debt ratio of 0.75 means roughly three-quarters of the company’s assets sit on borrowed money, leaving it exposed to financing costs in the current rate environment.

Indeed, Nestle Nigeria followed with N476.04 billion, even after cutting borrowings 27.18 percent from N653.70 billion in 2024. Moreover, its eroded equity base has lifted the debt-to-equity ratio to 65.64 times, a figure analysts flagged as a solvency concern if earnings soften further.

BUA Foods Plc ranked third at N469.38 billion, although a cash cushion left net debt at a more manageable N189 billion. Together with Dangote Sugar and Nestle, BUA Foods accounted for the bulk of the sector’s gross leverage.

Deleveragers in the mix

PZ Cussons Nigeria cut debt nearly 20 percent to N71.27 billion, though its negative equity of N17.34 billion still signals balance sheet stress that pricing alone cannot fix.

Furthermore, Nigerian Breweries delivered one of the sector’s sharpest deleveraging stories, slashing debt 64.68 percent to N59.71 billion from N169.05 billion. The brewer ended the year with N1.43 billion in net cash, a turnaround from previous years.

Additionally, Cadbury Nigeria cut debt 30.49 percent to N22.81 billion, while Vitafoam Nigeria reduced borrowings 33.5 percent to N9.30 billion, leaving net debt at just N286 million on N9.02 billion in cash.

Today, Champion Breweries posted one of the more striking shifts, with borrowings jumping to N59.03 billion from negligible levels a year earlier as the brewer reset its capital structure. Guinness Nigeria’s debt rose 9.43 percent to N43.92 billion amid ongoing operating pressures, while Honeywell Flour Mills held steady at N26.97 billion.

Meanwhile, International Breweries ended the year with N155.24 billion in net cash, the strongest net cash position in the FMCG group. Unilever Nigeria followed with N108.58 billion in net cash and NASCON Allied Industries with N41.57 billion.

Macro drivers

Industry analysts traced the divergent debt profiles to the macroeconomic backdrop: persistent inflation, naira depreciation and rising borrowing costs that have lifted operating expenses and inflated the cost of imported raw materials.

However, companies with strong cash flows and pricing power have used the cycle to clean their balance sheets, while those reliant on debt-funded inputs find themselves squeezed between higher financing costs and softer consumer demand.

Together, the figures sketch a sector navigating its toughest financing environment in a generation. Yet for now, the relative winners are the firms that swallowed the bitter pill of deleveraging in 2025, since they head into 2026 with lower interest bills, intact equity and the optionality to pursue growth as conditions improve.

Whether the heavily indebted names can engineer similar turnarounds will depend on how quickly the central bank pivots, where the naira lands and whether consumer demand revives enough to absorb the next round of price increases.