Asahi Group Holdings’ food sales tumbled by more than a fifth last month in the wake of the cyberattack that rocked the Japanese group’s domestic operations.

The company today (13 November) reported an “overview” of its sales performance in Japan in October that gave an indication of how the breach, first reported on 29 September, hit sales.

The preliminary revenue Asahi’s food business generated in October was down more than 20% year on year. Asahi said it had prioritised products “with high social demand”, such as infant formula and baby food.

Asahi said the “preliminary revenue” for its soft-drinks business, which resumed shipments on 3 October, was “around 60% year on year”.

“As the range of shipped products has been gradually expanded, the preliminary revenue for the final week of October reached around 80% year on year, showing a recovery trend,” the group said. “The preliminary revenue for September was roughly in line with the previous year.”

The Super Dry brewer’s beer business suffered less but still saw sales decline. Preliminary revenue in October “reached over 90%” of the levels seen in the same month of 2024.

Just Food understands Asahi’s beer business is shipping around 10% of the SKUs it was before the cyberattack. However, a focus on core products like Super Dry has meant the impact on sales has been less severe.

Rival brewer Kirin Holdings also released sales data for October today. The company said its beer arm had seen sales rise 19% compared to last October.

All three divisions continue to “handle order-taking and shipping operations manually”, the company added.

In September, Asahi reported a “systems failure” tied to the cyberattack, affecting production and distribution across the business. The company’s factories resumed operations a week later.

The company subsequently cautioned that personal information may have been compromised after the ransomware incident.

Cybercrime organisation Qilin reportedly claimed it was the source of the breach and posted 29 images to its website it claimed to be internal Asahi documents.