Peter Green Chilled, a logistics company responsible for transporting chilled food to some of the UK’s biggest supermarkets, has confirmed it is the victim of a ransomware attack that has disrupted its ability to process orders.

The firm, based near Shepton Mallet in Somerset, supplies regional stores for major retailers including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Aldi. The attack occurred on Wednesday evening, with the company informing clients on Thursday morning that no new orders could be processed due to systems being locked by cybercriminals demanding payment for access.

While the company says transport operations are continuing, many clients have been left scrambling to salvage time-sensitive deliveries.

“The transport activities of the business have continued unaffected throughout this incident,” said Managing Director Tom Binks. “We are issuing regular updates and operational workarounds.”

Thousands of Products Left in Limbo

Among those affected is Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, founder of The Black Farmer brand, who said ten pallets of chilled meat are now at risk of being wasted.

“That’s thousands and thousands of packs of products, just sitting there,” he said. “If they don’t reach the retailers in time, they’ll have to be thrown in the bin.”

The financial and operational impact for small producers and retailers is likely to be significant.

A Growing Pattern in Retail Cybercrime

This incident adds to a wave of attacks sweeping through UK retail and supply chains. In recent weeks, Marks & Spencer and Co-op have both suffered cyberattacks, with M&S reportedly having customer data stolen and stores affected by empty shelves.

According to Phil Pluck, Chief Executive of the Cold Chain Federation, food warehousing and distribution firms are increasingly in the crosshairs.

“Hackers know how critical cold chain logistics are to national food supply,” he said. “It gives them leverage to demand ransom, and many companies simply aren’t equipped to defend against this.”

Pluck revealed at least ten of the Federation’s member companies have been hit in the past year—yet many remain silent to protect reputation.

The Weakest Link in the National Food Chain

While the UK’s largest chilled food distributors—such as Lineage, GXO and Culina—invest heavily in cybersecurity and redundancy, smaller logistics firms are often under-resourced and under-protected, despite their essential role in keeping supermarket shelves stocked.

InsightBull, a UK-based cyber strategy and resilience firm, warns that this growing wave of attacks on “invisible infrastructure” could become catastrophic.

“It’s not the size of the company that matters—it’s the visibility of the systems to attackers,” says Mark Fermor, Founder of InsightBull.

“If it’s connected, it’s exposed. And if it’s exposed, it’s vulnerable. These are mission-critical systems that keep the nation fed.”

InsightBull’s Take: It’s Time to Disconnect to Protect

InsightBull works with logistics operators, critical infrastructure providers, and national retailers to strengthen cyber resilience, especially where traditional digital defences are no longer enough. Through tools like Firebreak™, the firm helps clients physically isolate critical systems, making them unreachable to hackers—even during active cyberattacks.

“In sectors like food logistics, uptime is everything,” Fermor explains. “Firebreak™ gives companies the ability to disconnect systems instantly—removing the attack surface entirely.”

It’s part of a growing movement toward “disconnection by design”—a model where systems only connect when absolutely necessary, limiting exposure and removing hackers’ ability to cause mass disruption.

What Happens Next

Peter Green Chilled has not confirmed whether it will meet the hackers’ ransom demands. External cybersecurity support has been brought in to manage containment and recovery. Customers are being guided through workarounds to resume partial operations. Regulators such as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) may be informed if customer data was involved.

In the meantime, supermarkets, food producers, and logistics firms are being urged to reassess their digital exposure—and consider how fast a single breach can escalate into a national supply risk.