They Produced 7 Million Bottles a Day. Now: Zero. Popular Beer Disappears from Shelves After Cyberattack
The manufacturer is switching to manual order processing, but it's not saving the situation.
At the beginning of the week, we reported on a cyberattack on the beer company Asahi, which led to the shutdown of almost all its production plants in Japan. The consequences were not long in coming—amid the digital infrastructure failure, stocks of the popular Super Dry beer began to shrink rapidly, and some stores are already expecting the product to disappear from shelves completely. The disruption affected order reception and logistics systems, causing the vast majority of Asahi's 30 Japanese plants to remain idle since Monday.
Major retail chains, including Lawson, are warning of potential supply disruptions. Some retailers say Super Dry could completely disappear from supermarkets within two to three days, and other Asahi products within a week at most.
Although competitors' products remain on sale, Asahi's offerings are key for a segment of customers due to their recognizable taste. Despite the obvious distribution problems, the company itself is refraining from commenting on inventory and supply recovery timelines.
According to Financial Times calculations based on 2024 data, Asahi produced about 6.7 million large bottles of beer per day. Any prolonged disruption to this cycle immediately impacts the retail market. Alongside Super Dry beer, the company produces soft drinks, baby food, and other goods, including products under private labels for retail chains. All of these are now at risk of shortage, especially after Asahi was forced to delay the launch of eight new products—from lemon ginger ale to protein bars.
The company itself states that no signs of customer information leakage have been detected. The investigation is still ongoing, and it has not yet been confirmed that the attack was related to ransomware.
Simultaneously, Asahi has begun testing manual, paper-based processing of orders and supplies—a trial run of the analog system was conducted on Wednesday, and the possibility of expanding such operations is now being discussed. Meanwhile, the corporation's overseas subsidiaries, including its European production facilities, continue to operate without disruption—the incident has only affected Japan.
The Asahi case is part of a broader wave of attacks targeting major corporations worldwide. Previously, Britain's Jaguar Land Rover halted production for nearly a month, and the UK government provided the company with emergency financial support.
These incidents clearly demonstrate how quickly a vulnerability in digital systems can escalate into a crisis on a national scale, affecting not only a company's internal processes but also the familiar consumer landscape. The supply stoppage caused by the attack exposes the critical dependence of production on automated logistics and underscores the necessity of investing in infrastructure resilience.
In an era where digital failures are causing shortages of everyday goods, the issue of cybersecurity is transcending the realm of a corporate problem and becoming an element of national security.
