Hydro extruding still hobbled by cyber attacks

The global extrusion operations of Norway-based integrated aluminium producer Hydro are still running at about half capacity following a cyber attack on Tuesday.

Hydro is drawing on inventories in order to continue making deliveries to customers and expects further restarts "during the coming days." Still, the company said it is "too early" to estimate how long fully resuming production will take or the economic impact of the attack.

"This is global, but some areas were hit harder than other. The US is also impacted," Hydro told Argus this morning.

Several plants in Europe stopped temporarily on the day of the attacks. Restarting was challenging because the firm could not connect to the facilities, Hydro said on Tuesday.

Although Hydro's billet production in Europe was largely unaffected as the firm switched to manual operation, the delivery of metal was impacted, another European extruder said.

"[Hydro] can't ship the metal as the firm is not connected to the data, it doesn't have the clients' purchase order numbers and shipping addresses," said the extruder.

Primary smelting, bauxite, alumina and energy operations are running at normal capacity and rolling operations are mostly normal again.

The cyber attack has infected Hydro's network with a ransomware virus, which encrypted all data within the group, including orders from customers. The data will not be released until the demanded ransom is paid.

"With a systematic approach our experts are step by step restoring business critical IT based functions to ensure stable production, serve our customers and limit financial impact, while always safeguarding our employee's safety," chief financial officer Eivind Kallevik said.

Hydro is Europe's second-largest aluminium producer and produces primary aluminium and billet. Hydro produced 1.1mn t of primary aluminium globally in 2017. The group operates the Alunorte alumina refinery and Albras smelter in Brazil and owns an extrusion business in the US.