Astral Foods’ poultry division has suffered a severe cyberattack that will cost the group R20-million in profit in its latest reporting period.
JSE-listed Astral Foods made the disclosure in a voluntary trading update and trading statement, published on Monday and distributed to investors.
The “cybersecurity incident” – which bears the hallmarks of a ransomware attack – took place on 16 March 2025.
“The group acted swiftly, implementing all disaster recovery protocols and preparedness plans. However, our poultry division was negatively impacted by downtime in processing and deliveries to customers,” the group said.
“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.”
It said that all business units are now functioning normally after the successful recovery of the group’s IT systems. It did not disclose in the trading update what the exact nature was of the cyberattack, nor whether any ransom was paid for the attackers.
No customer data
“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. We would like to sincerely thank our customers, staff and service providers for their unwavering support.”
Ransomware attacks have become prominent in South Africa as attackers, often based offshore, increasingly probe corporate IT systems for vulnerabilities.
Read: Africa has become a top target of cyberattackers
Once they have access to a system, ransomware attackers typically seek to exfiltrate or encrypt company data, often with the intention of demanding a ransom payment for the decryption keys. — © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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