European Supermarkets Discard Spoiled Food After New Wave of Cooling System Failures

Grocery shoppers in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Sweden woke up to spoiled food on Monday after refrigerators and freezers in dozens of stores overheated. The temperature spikes forced chains to discard stock, marking the second widespread incident in European food retail in less than a month.

Ahold Delhaize and Belgium's Colruyt reported that an IT incident overnight caused cooling systems to fail in dozens of locations. Swedish chains ICA and Coop also reported similar problems. Ahold stated it filed a cybersecurity report with Dutch police in October after detecting suspicious activity in its infrastructure. Sarah De Meester, a spokesperson for Delhaize, confirmed the chain noticed the temperature increases on Monday.

Stephan Moelans, CEO of Belgian refrigeration firm Sabcobel, told the Belga news agency that a cyberattack was likely the cause. He explained that evaporators in the units were switched into defrost mode. Moelans said technicians began mobilizing at 1 a.m. to disconnect affected units from the network. He added that many units require physical modifications to protect against the vulnerability, a fix that requires investment.

In Sweden, the scale of the damage varied by chain. ICA said a limited number of stores were affected but did not provide a specific count. One ICA store in Sjobo posted on Facebook that its fridges had been hacked and set to 50 degrees Celsius, which is approximately 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Helena Johansson, an ICA spokesperson, told the AFP news agency that the company is investigating the scale of the issue and focusing on helping affected stores.

The Coop chain said six of its roughly 800 stores in Sweden experienced problems. Company spokesman Carlos Cancino told AFP that the units either stopped working entirely or were partially impaired. He noted that he had not received information confirming a cyberattack for his chain. Stores in both countries had to throw away food that spoiled due to the heat.

These failures follow an incident on Oct. 12 when major French retailers reported that a cyberattack targeted refrigeration control systems made by Danish manufacturer Danfoss. French chains E. Leclerc, Intermarché, and Cooperative U said temperatures in hundreds of outlets surged as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Paris prosecutors confirmed the attack sparked fires as some equipment overheated. No group has claimed responsibility for the European grocery store hacks.

Christophe Hansen, the European Union food and agriculture commissioner, posted on X after the French incident that food security requires more attention at all levels. He described the exploitation of vulnerabilities in essential networked systems as a new reality. Dominique Schelcher, CEO of Cooperative U, called the targeting of equipment essential to fresh product preservation of extreme gravity.