At its 80th Pre-AGM media briefing in Lagos, Nigeria’s oldest and largest brewer unveiled a striking double story of a dramatic financial comeback and an accelerating sustainability agenda that is reshaping what it means to be a responsible corporate giant in Africa.
Nigeria’s largest brewer has achieved Zero Waste to Landfill across all its operational breweries, planted over 300,000 trees, and is now powering its facilities with some of the largest renewable energy installations among industrial manufacturers on the continent, all milestones that formed the centrepiece of Nigerian Breweries Plc’s 2025 Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability Report, presented to journalists in Lagos last week ahead of the company’s 80th Annual General Meeting.
The report, released under the company’s Brew a Better World (BaBW) sustainability framework, follows the company’s two consecutive years haemorrhaging billions of naira, battered by naira devaluation, soaring inflation, and surging finance costs. It used that same period to press harder on its environmental and social commitments, not retreat from them. The result is a body of work that reinforces the fact that sustainability and financial recovery are not competing priorities, but reinforcing ones.
Managing Director, Nigerian Breweries, Thibaut Boidin told the gathering, framing the BaBW agenda not as a corporate add-on but as architecture woven into the company’s core operating model: “In embedding these priorities into everything we do, we not only drive meaningful change in our communities but also contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, ensuring our growth is inclusive, equitable, and sustainable.”
The Figures
Revenue rose to approximately ₦1.47 trillion in 2025, up from ₦1.08 trillion the year before, while profit after tax rebounded to roughly ₦99 billion, a remarkable swing from the ₦144.9 billion loss recorded in 2024. Profit before tax climbed to about ₦161 billion, reversing a loss of over ₦180 billion, while operating profit surged by approximately 194 per cent. The Sun Nigeria
Market capitalisation told an equally compelling tale, rising 135 per cent from ₦991.5 billion in 2024 to ₦2.33 trillion, reinforcing the company’s standing among the most capitalised firms on the Nigerian Exchange. The broader equities market itself recorded a 51 per cent year-on-year gain, reaching a total market capitalisation of ₦99.4 trillion. Freedom Online
Board Chairperson Mrs Juliet Anammah, who anchored the briefing alongside a full executive team, credited the turnaround to smarter pricing, stronger consumer engagement, and an economy finally beginning to show signs of stabilisation after years of naira devaluation and runaway inflation.
Boidin acknowledged that while the government’s economic reforms helped steady several key indicators, ordinary Nigerians were still struggling to feel the benefits in their wallets. He noted the company is actively engaging groups like the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria to shape fiscal policy, and welcomed the government’s three-year excise framework as the kind of predictability businesses need to plan and invest with confidence.
Finance Director Maria Karaseva confirmed that Nigerian Breweries currently holds no forex liabilities in terms of borrowings or investment needs, a major shift from its position over the preceding three years. Total borrowings fell from over ₦200 billion in 2024 to approximately ₦59 billion in 2025, supported by proceeds from the company’s rights issue.
Despite the strong performance, Nigerian Breweries announced it would not declare dividends for the 2025 financial year due to negative retained earnings. Anammah explained that accumulated losses must be fully cleared before any profit distribution can be made, but expressed optimism that the company would return to positive retained earnings and resume dividend payments in the near future.
Green Ambition at Industrial Scale
If the financial story was one of recovery, the sustainability chapter was one of acceleration. The BaBW report detailed progress across nine strategic ambitions organised around three pillars: Environmental, Social, and Responsible, each mapped to the UN SDGs.
Environment
On the environmental front, the scale of Nigerian Breweries’ renewable energy push is without parallel among Nigerian industrial manufacturers. Across its network of breweries from Ibadan to Ama, Lagos, Aba, and Kaduna, the company executed or advanced a series of solar, biogas, and hydropower projects systematically reducing its dependence on fossil fuels and the national grid.
At Ibadan Brewery, a 2,500 kWp solar expansion paired with a 2 MW/MWh Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), delivered in partnership with Cross Boundary Energy, built on an earlier 663.6 kWp installation, lifting the brewery’s renewable electricity share from approximately 4 per cent to 20 per cent. Lagos Brewery’s 4.2 MWp solar system, completed under a Power Purchase Agreement with Daystar Power Energy, became fully operational in the second quarter of 2025, supplying up to 20 per cent of the site’s electricity needs. Aba Brewery’s 3.7 MWp solar system, also under a Daystar PPA, came online in June 2025, targeting the same 20 per cent renewable coverage threshold.
Perhaps most consequential is the landmark deal signed with Konexa in October 2024, the company’s largest renewable energy contract to date, which will supply 100 per cent renewable electricity to Lagos and Ama breweries from a combined 110 MWp source, delivering up to 50 GWh annually when operations begin in the second half of 2027. A separate Konexa collaboration is advancing a 30 MWp hydropower project earmarked to supply 100 per cent of Kaduna Brewery’s production electricity, with operations targeted before the end of 2025.
On thermal energy, Nigerian Breweries deployed a second biogas boiler at Ibadan Brewery, following the commissioning of Heineken’s AME region’s first dedicated 2 MW biogas boiler at Ama Brewery in late 2024. These units leverage biogas generated from wastewater treatment and now supply over 10 per cent of the thermal energy needed for brewing operations across both sites.
Water stewardship also advanced. The company’s water use ratio declined from 3.35 HL/HL in 2024 to 3.18 HL/HL in 2025, a 5 per cent year-on-year reduction equivalent to saving approximately 85 Olympic-size swimming pools. A Water 2.0 acceleration initiative piloted at Ama Brewery alone delivered a 10 per cent efficiency improvement in the first half of the year.
On circularity, 2025 marked a watershed for Nigerian Breweries as it achieved Zero Waste to Landfill across all its operational breweries. Through its Extended Producer Responsibility partnership with the Food and Beverage Recycling Alliance, the company supported the recovery of more than 938 metric tonnes of post-consumer recyclable waste. Internally, the NB Recycles programme collected 1.7 metric tonnes of recyclable materials at the Lagos head office alone.
The company also supported Orange Strategy Ltd. in a clean-up drive during the National Sports Festival in Abeokuta, recovering 7.6 metric tonnes of waste over 13 days. Environmental stewardship extended into biodiversity: in partnership with the Ogun State Ministry of Forestry and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, 16,400 trees were planted at the Olokemeji Forest Reserve in 2025, bringing the company’s cumulative total to 300,304 trees across 310 hectares.
Social Pillar
The social pillar of the BaBW agenda delivered measurable results for communities across Nigeria’s geopolitical zones. The completion and donation of a 2-tonne-per-day cassava processing plant in Awo-Omamma, Imo State, alongside an Entrepreneurship Development Centre in Kaduna State, represented legacy investments designed to serve up to 1,500 direct and 6,000 indirect beneficiaries annually through skills training and economic empowerment.
Local sourcing of raw materials reached 44.6 per cent of total inputs in 2025, a figure that underscores the company’s push to strengthen domestic agricultural value chains — a priority that simultaneously serves its forex risk management objectives.
The 11th edition of the Maltina Teacher of the Year competition, organised through the Nigerian Breweries-Felix Ohiwerei Education Trust Fund, recognised 28 state champions. English Language teacher Ms Serah Yusuf from Abuja emerged as the grand prize winner, receiving ₦10 million in cash, an overseas capacity development programme, and a school infrastructure project valued at ₦30 million. The event was also deployed as a platform to spotlight the plight of out-of-school children in urban slum communities, in partnership with the Slum2School initiative.
Fair wages were sustained at 100 per cent for both direct employees and contract staff through the SMART outsourcing programme, a commitment the company frames not merely as compliance, but as integral to its long-term social licence to operate.
