Cyber attack impacts operations at South Africa's top poultry supplier Astral Foods

South African poultry products giant Astral Foods said it experienced a major cyber security incident that affected the production and deliveries of poultry products to customers for a limited period of time.

Astral Foods is the largest integrated poultry producer in South Africa, specialising in the production and marketing of poultry products, including fresh and frozen poultry, day-old chicks, and hatching eggs. The company’s activities include breeder and broiler production, abattoir and further processing operations and sales and production and sale of day-old chicks and hatching eggs. 

In a data security incident notice shared with investors, Astral Foods said that on March 16, it became a victim of a data security incident that impacted processing and deliveries to customers. The company said it immediately launched an investigation , with assistance from external cyber security experts, to determine the nature and scope of the attack and notified relevant law enforcement authorities about the incident.

“Our Poultry Division was negatively impacted by downtime in processing and deliveries to customers. This resulted in a loss of revenue, and together with costs to catch-up a backlog in production, have impacted the Group’s profits in this reporting period by approximately R20 million,” the company said.

Astral Foods has assured its investors that all its business units are operating normally following the recovery of its systems. 

“Astral can confirm that no confidential information or sensitive data of customers, suppliers or individual stakeholders was compromised as a result of the cyber intrusion,” the company added.

At the time of publishing, no known hacker group claimed responsibility for the cyber attack on Astral Foods. The company also did not share details on who was behind the cyber attack, how much data was compromised, or whether it has received a ransom demand.