Delhaize reports IT incident as about 40 Belgian stores see fridges and freezers overheat

Overnight failure across Belgium

Overnight from Sunday to Monday, 2 November, the cooling systems in dozens of Delhaize stores stopped holding their temperature. Store managers received a text message from the chain at around 04:00 warning them that temperatures at the refrigeration installations were climbing. A Delhaize spokesperson confirmed the problem and said at least 40 stores were affected in both Flanders and Wallonia. Fridges and, above all, freezers were reported to have reached about 15 degrees. Some managers rushed to their shops and called in refrigerated trucks to save stock, while HLN reported readings of 70 degrees, a figure the chain could not confirm.

Which shops were hit

RTL Info, cited by RTBF and 7sur7, says the problem mainly affects Shop & Go convenience stores attached to Q8 petrol stations, Proxy Delhaize stores, some Delhaize supermarkets and shops along motorways. Het Laatste Nieuws received tips about affected branches in Leuven, Hoepertingen, Hoeilaart and Boortmeerbeek, while De Standaard placed branches in the province of Namur and in Hainaut. These are reports and tips rather than a published list, so the full set of stores has not been confirmed. Carrefour Belgium also reported an incident on Monday morning, and at the time reports spoke of 15 affected stores shortly after 09:00. The group said it was analysing the situation.

Delhaize (at least 40, per spokesperson)40

Carrefour Belgium (about 15 at the time)15

Delhaize (at least 40, per spokesperson)

40 stores

Carrefour Belgium (about 15 at the time)

15 stores

Data from the article text

Butchers point to altered settings

The Antwerp-based butcher chain De Laet and Van Haver said its alarms went off at 03:00 and that its refrigerator temperatures changed suddenly. Operations team leader Werner Muylle told Belga that the settings of its refrigeration systems had been changed from outside. That put the evaporators into defrost mode, which warmed the units. The butchers acted in time and paused the system before the fridges reached high temperatures. The articles do not say who changed the settings, and they do not confirm that the Delhaize incident had the same cause. De Standaard described the Delhaize problem as a possible cyberattack.

Delhaize's response

Delhaize describes the problem as an IT incident and says it is not limited to one region, since stores in both Flanders and Wallonia are affected. A spokesperson said the company is examining how to restore the shops:

“examining how the stores can be made operational again”

VRT NWS reported that the damage could be considerable if everything in the fridges and freezers has to be thrown away. Sources do not give a total loss figure or a restart date.

Earlier cyber incidents

NOS reported that French supermarket chains were hit by a cyberattack about three weeks earlier, in which hackers disrupted cooling systems, with some set to 50 degrees. De Standaard named Intermarché, Carrefour and Monoprix among the affected chains and wrote of hundreds of stores, while RTBF put the number at about 150, and VRT NWS attributed the French problems to Delhaize. The sources differ on which chains were hit. Ahold Delhaize, the parent group of Delhaize and Albert Heijn, had a cybersecurity incident in October that affected the whole chain and left some shelves empty.