Japanese beer giant Asahi Group warned on Friday that a cyberattack on the company this week had a devastating impact, halting shipments from its breweries with no sign of resumption, fueling fears of beer shortages.
Japan's most popular beer maker said on Monday it "experienced a system outage" due to a cyberattack, forcing the suspension of orders and shipments of various beverages, including its flagship Asahi Super Dry.
"There is currently no immediate sign of recovery of our systems," a company spokesperson said on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Production has not been directly affected by (the system failure), but production has stopped due to the suspension of shipments."
The company announced the attack on its local operations in a statement on Monday and said it was investigating the possibility of a ransomware attack.
The news worries Japan's ubiquitous convenience stores, which are major stockers of Asahi beer.
A spokesman for Seven & I Holdings, which operates the 7-Eleven convenience store chain, said the company was preparing to post notices warning customers of the suspension, but added that the suspension "has not yet caused significant disruption."
"We don't expect (Asahi Beverages) to disappear from all our stores at once, although it all depends on sales in each store."
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Japanese beer giant Asahi forced to halt production due to cyber attack