RETAILERS REPORT OVERNIGHT FREEZER TEMPERATURE SPIKES ACROSS EUROPE

Retailers Ahold Delhaize, Carrefour, Colruyt, ICA, Coop and Ikea reported overnight temperature rises in store fridges and freezers across Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia and Sweden on Monday. A suspected cyber-attack in Ireland also disrupted 13 SuperValu shops, alongside affected Belgian Proxy Delhaize minimarkets and Shop & Go stores at Q8 service stations. Spokesperson Sarah De Meester said Dutch group Ahold Delhaize is investigating temperature increases across dozens of its Belgium and Luxembourg supermarkets. Colruyt Group said attackers hit fridge systems at five franchised Belgian Spar shops, while Sweden's Coop reported six affected stores.

Swedish grocer ICA reported overnight cooling disruptions, with a notice at Stockholm's ICA Baronen store blaming a cyber-attack for broken freezers. One Swedish ICA shop posted on social media that hackers set its cooling units to 50C overnight before the store reopened. Stephan Moelans, chief executive of Belgian refrigeration firm Sabcobel, which operates Delhaize systems, said a cyber-attack switched unit evaporators to defrost mode. "We started mobilising technicians at 1am," Moelans said before his office declined further comment, while Ahold Delhaize had reported suspicious infrastructure activity to Dutch police in October.

The disruptions follow an October attack in France where police said hackers seized control of internet-connected cooling units at up to 700 supermarkets. French police said hackers remotely overrode settings on thousands of fridges, freezers and chiller cabinets, raising temperatures from -27C to over 50C. That attack hit Intermarché, Coopérative U, Carrefour, Leclerc and Monoprix outlets, causing fires and forcing stores to discard meat, dairy and frozen goods. French shops recorded losses from tens of thousands of euros to over €130,000 (£109,000), totalling millions of euros.