Banana sector: PHP exports as much but loses CFA 10.4 billion in two years

Plantations du Haut Penja (PHP) ships two out of every three bananas that Cameroon exports. Yet the company lost CFA 10.4 billion in two years. How can you sell so many bananas and still lose money? Here is the whole story, explained simply, with checked figures.

The story in one sentence

In 2025, PHP sent almost as many bananas abroad as in 2024, but it earned much less money from its sales and spent more than it earned: so it made a loss.

What is PHP?

PHP stands for Plantations du Haut Penja. Its banana farms are around Penja, in the Moungo division of Cameroon’s Littoral region, a town already famous for its Penja pepper.

PHP is a subsidiary. A subsidiary is a bit like a child in a family: it has its own house and its own work, but it belongs to a “parent company”. Here, the parent company is Compagnie Fruitière, a French group that now owns 100% of PHP.

Bananas are its main business, but not the only one: PHP also grows pepper, cocoa and flowers.

PHP is the country’s biggest banana exporter: in 2025, out of 225,345 tonnes of bananas exported by Cameroon, 151,713 tonnes came from PHP. In other words, out of every 3 boxes of bananas leaving Cameroon, 2 come from PHP.

Selling a lot but earning less: how is that possible?

To understand, imagine Aïcha, who sells doughnuts outside the school.

1. What she takes in

   Aïcha sells 100 doughnuts at CFA 50 each: she receives CFA 5,000. All the money received from customers is called revenue.

2. What she spends

   To make her doughnuts, she bought flour, oil, sugar and charcoal for CFA 6,000. These are her costs.

3. What is left

   5,000 − 6,000 = −1,000 CFA. She is CFA 1,000 short: that is a loss. If she had spent less than she took in, it would be a profit.

PHP works the same way, only much bigger! Here are its figures, taken from its parent company’s accounts:

Converted at the fixed rate of €1 = CFA 655.957. Revenue fell by about CFA 27.5 billion in one year, while banana exports barely moved. So the drop in sales does not come from bananas alone.

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What the accounts do not say

PHP does not only grow bananas: it also produces pepper, cocoa and flowers. But the accounts published by the parent company give no breakdown of sales by activity, nor of costs. So we do not know yet:

• how much of the drop comes from bananas, pepper, cocoa or flowers;
• which costs made the loss grow.

The parent company puts money back into the business

When a subsidiary loses money, its parent company can help, a bit like parents helping their child fix a bicycle. That is what happened:

• In 2024, Compagnie Fruitière bought 1,836,679 new PHP shares at CFA 10,000 each, bringing CFA 18.37 billion into its share capital (the starting money of a company, provided by its owners).
• At the end of 2025, it had also lent PHP about CFA 11.2 billion (€17.09m), compared with about CFA 12.6 billion a year earlier.
• In its own accounts, it values its stake in PHP at about CFA 29.1 billion (€44.31m).

Mbonjo: PHP grows even bigger

On 22 October 2025, the Cameroonian company Boh Plantations sold its banana farms. PHP took over the Mbonjo plantation, in the Littoral region, and another Compagnie Fruitière subsidiary, CDBM (Compagnie des bananes de Mondoni), took over the Missaka site, in the South-West region. Boh Plantations’ 554 employees were taken on by the two companies.

According to the specialist website FreshPlaza, PHP and CDBM now account for more than 80% of national production of export bananas. But the price paid for Mbonjo, the investment still needed and what the plantation will earn have not been made public.

Key takeaways

• PHP exports 2 out of every 3 Cameroonian bananas: it is the giant of the sector.
• In 2025, it exported almost as much as in 2024 (−1%), but its revenue fell by 32.4%.
• It lost CFA 10.4 billion in two years, and its loss grew by 25% in one year.
• Selling a lot is not enough: to make money, you must take in more than you spend.
• The accounts do not yet explain why: the next figures will be worth watching.

Quick quiz: did you understand?

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Investir au Cameroun, “Filière banane : PHP cumule 10,4 milliards de FCFA de pertes en deux ans…”, 24 September 2026 (in French, based on Compagnie Fruitière Import’s accounts)
• FreshPlaza, “PHP and CDBM took over Boh Plantations’ production assets in October 2025”
• Fruitnet, “Cameroon banana exporter PHP revenue falls 32% in 2025 despite stable export volumes”
• Wikipedia (French), “Plantations du Haut-Penja” (activities: bananas, pepper, cocoa, flowers)
• Field information gathered by the Agriculture au Cameroun newsroom (end of pineapple growing at PHP)