Asahi restarts brewing at its domestic breweries

Japanese drinks giant Asahi has restarted operations at six of its domestic breweries following suspension due to a cyber-attack last week.

The group, which reported a cyberattack on 29 September, had needed to halt production at many of its sites across Japan and postpone the release of new products. At the time, the company had assured that there had been “no confirmed leakage of personal information or customer data to external parties”.

The brewer said in a statement that “the system failure is limited to operations within Japan”.

Company officials had declared that they had needed to ship Asahi’s flagship Super Dry beer since 2 October and had been taking orders by telephone and then processing them manually to deal with the situation.

Despite the fact that Asahi’s European operations, including the UK, were not affected, however Japan has accounted for about half of the brewer’s total sales and Japanese retailers prepared customers for a shortage of Asahi products on shelf.

Customer service operations, which had also been put on hold, are now expected to resume within the week via telephone. Asahi officials have insisted that Asahi will still be able to accept new enquiries about its products going forwards.

Speaking to the drinks business, Asahi Group Holdings senior manager, corporate communications, Shiori Shimizu, said: “Asahi Breweries resumed operations at all six of its factories in Japan on 2 October. However, the factories are not yet fully operational. Currently, the only brand being produced and shipped at Asahi Breweries factories in Japan is Asahi Super Dry, as we are focusing on the production and shipment of our flagship product. However, Asahi Breweries will resume shipments of additional 16 products from 15 October, including beer, non-alcohol beer, and whisky.”

Asahi was the latest business to be attacked by online hackers. In recent months, other major companies including Jaguar Land Rover and UK retailers Marks & Spencer and Co-op have also suffered system breaches.

Shimizu told db: “Although the production systems themselves were not affected by the cyberattack, many factories in Japan temporarily suspended production due to the inability to ship products. However, after manual order processing* began on 1 October, it became possible to resume production.”

According to Shimizu: “Starting from 1 October, Asahi Breweries began processing orders manually, and shipments of these manually processed orders have been taking place. As a result, production has partially resumed to match the volume of orders and shipments being handled manually.”

Asahi Europe & International’s communication and public affairs manager Phillip Russell added: “None of Asahi’s Europe and International operations are impacted by this incident.”

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