ELLWANGEN (dpa-AFX) - Following a cyber attack on battery manufacturer Varta, the company is expected to be able to restart the first parts of its production facilities soon. This could happen next week, Varta announced on Thursday. It is still unclear when production will be fully resumed. It is now clear that an organized hacker group is behind the attack on the IT systems, it added.

All five production sites, three of them in Germany and one each in Romania and Indonesia, as well as the administration are affected. The police are investigating, but Varta would not give any further details. The extent of the damage was also not disclosed. Varta had shut down its IT systems and therefore also production for security reasons when the cyber attack was discovered a week ago.

The company was recently in the red. In the spring of last year, it was forced to restructure and announced the elimination of around 800 jobs worldwide as part of a cost-cutting program. The company is currently investigating how the cyber attack could have affected the ongoing restructuring, it added./avg/rwi/DP/nas