[ferro-alloys.com]Norwegian aluminum producer Norsk Hydro has temporarily idled activities at some extrusion plants following a cyber attack early Tuesday, while the primary production facilities affected have been switched over to manual operations, company spokesman Halvor Molland told S&P Global Platts.

Hydro CFO Eivind Kallevik, clarified in a webcast later in the day that extruded solutions and rolled products have been the most impacted of Hydro's business areas, with temporary stoppages and production challenges at several plants.

"The situation for Hydro through this is quite severe, the entire worldwide network is down, affecting our production as well as our office operations," Eivind said.

Hydro has now isolated all plants and operations and is switching to manual operations and procedures where possible, Eivind added.

Primary plants within Norway are using more manual operations, but are running normally despite this. Remelters are also under manual operation, but are also running as usual.

Molland earlier told Platts that the manual operation of primary plants was not expected to affect production rates but that it would be more labor-intensive.

Primary plants outside of Norway were unaffected, as were Hydro's bauxite, alumina and energy businesses.

Hydro produced 1.993 million mt of primary aluminum in 2018. Sales volumes to the external market from its extruded solutions unit reached 1.396 million mt, with rolled products sales of 951,000 mt.

Norsk Hydro also clarified it was too early to indicate the operational impact or how long it would take to resolve the issue.

Three-month aluminum prices on the London Metal Exchange hit an intraday high Tuesday of $1,946/mt, the highest in three months.

(S&P Global Platts)

• [Editor:王可]