Clorox Wipes May Be Harder To Find In NJ After Cyberattack

NEW JERSEY — Shoppers in New Jersey may soon find a popular disinfecting wipes product missing from store shelves, as flu and cold season ramps up and the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations increases again.

The Clorox Company said in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it found “unauthorized activity” on some of its IT systems.

The attack, announced on Aug. 14, forced Clorox to take multiple systems offline and switch to manual ordering and processing procedures, reducing its rate of operations. Now it’s warning of a recent “elevated level of consumer product availability issues,” which can affect businesses, schools, and hospitals as well as individual households.

“The cybersecurity attack damaged portions of the Company’s IT infrastructure, which caused wide scale disruption of Clorox’s operations,” the filing said. “The Company is repairing the infrastructure and is reintegrating the systems that were proactively taken offline.”

Clorox makes other well-known household cleaning staples, including bleach, detergents, and disinfectant spray. And, the company produces other household brands like Pine-Sol, Formula 409, Fresh Step cat litter, Burt's Bees, Tilex, and Glad.

The looming shortage of Clorox wipes and other cleaning products comes as flu season begins to slowly tick up across the country, including in Texas and Washington, D.C., where flu activity was already moderate the week of Sept. 9.

In New Jersey, flu activity was minimal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths have risen again in the Garden State, also and around the nation.

Clorox, which is a publicly traded company, said it expects it will begin returning to normal automated order-processing by the week of Sept. 24. It has resumed production at the “vast majority of its manufacturing sites,” but expects it’ll ramp up to full production over time. How long that will take is unclear.

“At this time, the Company cannot estimate how long it will take to resume fully normalized operations,” the filing said.

Clorox is still evaluating the extent of the impact the cyberattack will have on its finances and business. The company said it expects order processing delays and product outages will have a material impact on its quarterly financial results early next year.

“It is premature for the Company to determine longer-term impact, including fiscal year outlook, given the ongoing recovery,” Clorox said.