Astral Foods flags sharp profit fall, reports cyberattack

24 March 2025 - 14:18 By Reuters
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Astral Foods, South Africa's top poultry producer, says its flagship division was negatively affected by downtime after a cybersecurity incident on March 16. File photo.
Astral Foods, South Africa's top poultry producer, says its flagship division was negatively affected by downtime after a cybersecurity incident on March 16. File photo.
Image: Russell Roberts

Astral Foods said on Monday it expects its half-year profit to decline by up to 60%, with a recent cybersecurity incident compounding the impact of lower chicken prices and higher input costs.

South Africa's top poultry producer said its flagship division was negatively affected by downtime in processing and deliveries to customers after a cybersecurity incident on March 16, which affected its half-year profit by about R20m.

This was due to revenue losses and the added costs of clearing the production backlog, Astral said in an initial trading update.

All business units were now operating normally and “no confidential information or sensitive data of customers, suppliers or individual stakeholders was compromised as a result of the cyber intrusion,” the company added.

Astral expects its profit to decline by up to 60% in the six months to March 31 on the back of lower prices for chicken amid constrained consumer spending and higher feed input costs after last year's drought.


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