Beer manufacturers warned of supply delays after data center attacks

The Association of Beer, Malt and Beverage Manufacturers (APP) warned retail chains about delays in product deliveries amid disruptions in the IT infrastructure due to attacks on Yandex data centers. This is stated in the letter of the Executive Director of APP Vyacheslav Mamontov to the Association of companies of omnical retail trade (ACORT). A copy of the letter sent on October 12 was reviewed by RBC, its authenticity was confirmed by a source on the food market. ACORT confirmed receipt of the letter.

ACORT is in constant working dialogue with industry associations of producers, including the Association of Beer Producers. An appeal from the APP has been received, we are closely monitoring the situation, ACORT said.

The APP includes the largest producers of beer and non-alcoholic products in Russia, which together account for about 70% of the market (including Baltika, Drinks Together, Bochkarev Brewery).

Supply issues are solved by suppliers directly with retail chains, while networks do not report problems in interaction with the state labeling system (GIS MT), ACORT indicated. According to them, the difficulties are point-by-point and concern individual producers. For their part, retail chains together with suppliers are doing everything necessary to ensure uninterrupted supplies and keep the usual assortment in stores for customers. There are no prerequisites for the deficit, ACORT stressed.

The consequences of the attacks disrupted the work of the service provider Utreis, whose software is located in the cloud infrastructure of Yandex, the letter said. It says that failures led to disruptions at production sites, the business processes of manufacturers were paralyzed. In addition, manufacturers faced difficulties in applying labeling codes and transferring data to the state monitoring information system, the letter states. As a result, this led to delays in the release of products into circulation and their shipment to customers.

Utreis confirmed to RBC that the Utrace HUB service was disrupted due to failures in the Yandex.Cloud infrastructure. Since the discovery of the incident, the Utrace team has been working on restoring the service around the clock in cooperation with Yandex.Cloud LLC. Although the work has been partially restored, we continue active work to fully normalize all functions, the company said in a statement.

In October, drones attacked Yandex facilities three times. The company’s data centers in the Ryazan region, Kaluga and Vladimir were hit.

The APP letter says that the failure primarily affected the brewing companies Baltika and Drinks Together (formerly AB InBev Efes). The service provider, according to the association, expects to resume work by October 16. For this period, manufacturers, in coordination with the system operator, switch to manual mode of shipment of products.

“On the basis of the foregoing, we ask you to take into account the current situation as a force majeure circumstance that prevents the timely fulfillment of the requirements for the transfer of data on labeled beer and non-alcoholic products and inform ACORT members about it, as well as the related delays in the supply of brewing products to retail chains by companies, members of our association,” Mamontov wrote in the letter. The head of the association also asked to advise retail chains not to apply contractual sanctions for delays in deliveries caused by a failure.

The press service of the APP told RBC that its companies are working normally. The representative of Baltika replied that the position of the APP members was set out in the letter. The "Honest Sign" labeling system operates without failures, a representative of its operator, the CRPT, said. RBC sent a request to the company “Drinks Together”.

Utreis added that they are in touch with customers and regularly hold calls to inform about the progress of recovery. “Some customers have already established production processes, now work is underway with the logistics link,” the representative of the service said. He added that in order to prevent such incidents in the future, additional work is underway to redistribute infrastructure to alternative sites.

The attacks caused damage to the infrastructure of Yandex data centers and disruptions in the services of the company and other organizations. These include Dodo Pizza, M. Video, Lenta and Magnet. Failures were also observed in the operation of its services in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and Yandex Food in Kyrgyzstan.

Later, Yandex announced the gradual restoration of services and agreements with other cloud providers on the accelerated placement of data and services of its customers.