Astral Foods, which is both the largest poultry company and the largest feed company in Africa, reported that it was the victim of a “cybersecurity incident” on March 16.
In a voluntary trading update that can be found on the company’s website, the South Africa-based Astral Foods disclosed that the incident took place, and that its earnings per share during the first half of fiscal year 2025 will likely be lower than expected, partially because it occurred.
“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. 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 ZAR20 million (US$1.1 million),” the trading update read.
No mention was made concerning how the incident impacted the company’s feed operations.
Astral foods said that as of March 24, all business units are “operating normally following the recovery of our systems.
The company also confirmed that no confidential information or sensitive data of customers, suppliers or individual stakeholders was compromised.
Another voluntary trading update will be issued by Astral Foods in April.
According to data from the WATTPoultry.com and Feedstrategy.com Top Companies databases, Astral Foods slaughtered 257 broiler chickens and produced 1,485,000 million metric tons of feed during the past year. It ranks as the world’s 43rd largest poultry company and 100th largest feed company.
Other companies involved in the global agrifood industry to have been victims of cyberattacks in recent years include JBS, Maple Leaf Foods, AGCO, NEW Cooperative and HKScan (now HKFoods).
