A 2022 cybersecurity attack against Maple Leaf Foods cost the Canadian poultry and protein company at least CA$23 million (US$16.6 million), officials with the company disclosed.
On November 4, 2022, Maple Leaf Foods’ operations were disrupted related to a cybersecurity incident.
On March 9, when the company released the financial results of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2022 – which ran from October through December – Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain called that three-month period the “cyber quarter.” The company, despite a 5.8% year-over-year increase in sales for the fourth quarter, went from net earnings of CA$1.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 to a net loss of CA$41.5 million during the most recent quarter.
“Our cyber incident was insidious, impacting our business in multiple ways. In real time, we had to pivot the business from a highly efficient network of operations, one that is highly automated … to a business that had to run entirely on a manual basis,” McCain said.
“The cyber incident impacted our adjusted EBITDA by at least CA$23 million or 200 basis points and further knock-on effects in delaying the resolution of the many supply chain inefficiencies that’s we’ve been facing and are working to stabilize.”
While the cyberattack was harmful to the company, Maple Leaf Foods President and Chief Operating Officer Curtis Frank praised the company’s employees for quickly reacting to the situation and preventing losses from being even more severe.
“We are immensely proud of how our team responded in the face of this crisis. In less than 48 hours, we were able to pivot our organization to operate in a fully manual process, basically going back to paper and pencils. With remarkable pace, our information systems team cleaned, rebooted and restored our systems, allowing us to start back on the road to recovery,” said Frank.
