91Èȱ¬

Production at four breweries owned by Belgian beer firm Duvel has ground to a halt after a cyber-attack.

The company says it fell victim to the suspected ransomware attack "during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday."

Initially, five of its production facilities were shut down - one has since come back online.

Duvel said it was currently unable to give further details "as the investigation into the cause of the cyber-attack is ongoing."

"The built-in command systems and alarms in the IT-system worked well, so our IT department was immediately informed of the attack," the company said in a statement.

"The servers were immediately shut down, which also shut down production at the four Belgian production sites and the production site in Kansas City."

Duvel said that one plant, in Puurs-Sint-Amands in Belgium, was now back up and running, but production at the other four was still halted.

Duvel, which also produces beers such as Chouffe, Vedett and Liefmans, was founded in 1871 and made €583m (£497m) in revenue in 2022.

That year it produced around 230 million litres of beer. It is not yet known whether the supply of its products will be affected by this incident.

The company that it was a ransomware attack.

A ransomware attack is where hackers cut off access to files, normally through encryption, until they are paid.