Cleaning product giant Clorox blamed a cyberattack for shortages on Monday, saying that the disruptions to operations are ongoing and have been since August. It is fulfilling orders and performing administration "manually," it admitted in regulatory filings, but claims it has brought factories back online and expects to start getting back to normal next week.
"Clorox has already resumed production at the vast majority of its manufacturing sites and expects the ramp up to full production to occur over time," the company said. "At this time, the company cannot estimate how long it will take to resume fully normalized operations."
The company said the cyberattack and the delays will hurt its current-quarter financial results materially, although Clorox said determining any longer-term impact would be premature, "given the ongoing recovery."
An interesting comment on Reddit:
I work for clorox. This has been going on for a month. My plant has been shut down and they have been paying me to come to work and sit around for 12 hours a day. Kinda crazy. People here are getting scared they're not gonna figure this out and shut the plant down.
Bleach is its biggest brand, but Clorox has snapped up many adjacent firms over the years to form a bathroom emergency conglomerate: Burt's Bees, Formula 409, Glad, Hidden Valley, Kingsford, Kitchen Bouquet, KC Masterpiece, Liquid-Plumr are among its acquisitions.
There's a impactful joke to make about plumbing and computers here.