Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc, Nigeria’s leading sugar processor, has reported a healthy financial performance for the first half of the year ended June 30, 2025, marking a return to profitability in the second quarter. The company’s unaudited six-month results, released on the Nigerian Exchange Plc, reveal an increase in revenue and gross profit, reflecting the effectiveness of its operational strategies and ongoing investments in backward integration.
For the first half of 2025, Dangote Sugar recorded a total revenue of N430.21 billion. This represents a 45.53 per cent growth compared to the N295.62 billion earned in the corresponding period of 2024. Breaking down the performance, revenue for the second quarter alone rose by 25 per cent to N216.28 billion, up from N172.90 billion in Q2 2024.
Despite a rise in the cost of sales, which increased by 36.42 per cent to N378.535 billion from N277.486 billion, the company’s gross profit rose 184.91 per cent, reaching N51.677 billion compared to N18.138 billion in H1 2024.
A key highlight of the results is Dangote Sugar’s return to profitability in the second quarter of 2025. The refinery reported a pre-tax profit of N523.8 million for Q2, a recovery from the N104.5 billion loss recorded in the same period last year. This swing to profit indicates a successful scalability of operational challenges and a more stable financial environment compared to the previous year. Concurrently, the company’s total assets demonstrated strong growth, standing at N1.033 trillion as of June 30, 2025.
Aliko Dangote, chairman of Dangote Refinery, recently reiterated the company’s ambitious long-term target for 2025 and beyond to increase refined sugar production to 1.5 million metric tonnes annually. This strategic objective is central to placing Dangote Sugar as a key contributor to Nigeria’s self-sufficiency in sugar production, thereby reducing the nation’s reliance on sugar imports.
Dangote Sugar Refinery is a leading sugar processor in Nigeria, involved in the refining, distributing, and marketing of granulated sugar to major players across the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and skincare industries, as well as to wholesalers. The company operates a 1.44 million metric tonnes (MT) sugar refining plant in Apapa, Lagos, and a 50,000-tonne per annum refining facility in Numan, Adamawa State, bringing its total refining capacity to 1.49 million metric tonnes.
The company has consistently invested in its backward integration programme, which aims to reduce its reliance on raw sugar imports by cultivating sugarcane locally. Dangote Sugar currently boasts 47,364 hectares of sugar plantation and has a medium-term goal of producing 1.5 million metric tonnes of refined sugar annually directly from its sugarcane farms.
The strong financial performance in the first half of 2025, particularly the return to profitability in Q2, indicates that Dangote Sugar’s strategic investments and operational focus are yielding positive results. As Nigeria continues to push for greater self-sufficiency in key agricultural commodities, Dangote Sugar’s role and its ongoing backward integration efforts is expected to remain central to the nation’s economic diversification and food security objectives.
