South Africa’s largest chicken producer hit by cyber attack

Astral Foods, South Africa’s largest chicken producer, was hit by a cyber attack on 16 March 2025, which impacted the company’s poultry division and is expected to negatively impact its profit by R20 million. 

This was revealed by the company in a voluntary trading update ahead of the management team’s attendance at the Bank of America South Africa Investor Conference this week.

Astral said it has come under immense pressure from the declining price of chickens and increased feed costs, which has negatively impacted its margins. 

Despite these headwinds, Astral said its balance sheet remains strong, supported by healthy cash generation for the period under review. 

The company’s continued focus on strengthening the balance sheet and prudent working capital management has resulted in it maintaining a net cash position in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period last year.

In the trading update, the company revealed that it had experienced a cybersecurity incident on 16 March 2025. 

Astral said it responded swiftly and implemented all disaster recovery protocols and preparedness plans. 

However, its poultry division was negatively impacted by downtime in processing and delivery to customers. 

This resulted in a loss of revenue and, coupled with costs to catch-up the backlog in production, impacted the company’s profits in the reporting period by approximately R20 million. 

Astral said all of its business units are operating normally following the recovery of its systems and can confirm that no confidential information or sensitive data was compromised. 

However, the increased pricing pressures and the cybersecurity incident significantly impacted the company’s financial performance. 

Astral said it has reasonable certainty that earnings per share and headline earnings per share for the six months ending 31 March are expected to decrease by between 55% and 60%. 

The company will provide a further trading statement in April 2025.