Japan’s largest brewer, Asahi, the owner of Peroni and Grolsch, has been forced to suspend shipments and halt production at many of its domestic plants following a cyberattack that has paralysed its logistics systems for nearly a week.
Deliveries of its best-known lager, Asahi Super Dry, have already been missed by bars and retailers, raising fears of shortages. The company confirmed that order processing, call centres and customer services were also affected by the outage, though production lines themselves were not directly compromised.
“As an emergency measure, we manually processed orders for some products, including Asahi Super Dry. However, this was a temporary and urgent response and it remains undecided whether such measures will be continued after October 2,” a spokesperson said.
While the brewer has insisted it has found no evidence that customer or personal data has been stolen, the incident is being investigated by police amid reports that ransomware may have been involved.
According to the Financial Times, specialists from Tokyo-based Nihon Cyber Defence (NCD) believe Japanese firms have become prime ransomware targets due to weak cyber protections and a tendency to settle extortion demands quietly.
Data from Japan’s National Police Agency showed 222 ransomware incidents were formally logged in 2024, up 12% year on year. However, NCD experts argue that the official tally reflects only a sliver of the true number of cases occurring across the corporate sector.
Asahi operates about 30 factories across Japan. Many of them have stood idle since the beginning of the week because products could not be shipped, despite production systems being otherwise functional.
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The company has also postponed the release of more than a dozen new products - including soft drinks and confectionery - which were scheduled for launch this month.
Shares in Asahi Group Holdings have dropped more than 5% since trading opened on Monday. The brewer had enjoyed a rise of more than 7% this year before the attack, which has so far not affected its international operations in Europe, where it owns brands such as Peroni and Grolsch.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Asahi is the latest in a string of food and beverage companies to be targeted worldwide. In recent years, breweries in Russia, Germany, Belgium and Sweden have suffered ransomware incidents, while the Co-op Group in Britain disclosed last week that a cyberattack in April cost it £80 million in half-year profits.
The Japanese brewer, which reported first-half revenue of more than $9 billion, has not said when it expects normal service to resume.
