The Australian wool sales have been cancelled for week 35 due to an unprecedented malicious cyber-attack on the Australian wool industry’s main software program, Talman, which was held to ransom.
This has caused major disruption to the industry, affecting not only the auction buying system, but the exporter and broker systems as well.
Talman are working around the clock to resolve the issue and are building new servers that will have back up data restored on them. The problem is how far back the data has been corrupted encrypted by the hackers. This can be a lengthy process, however is close to a conclusion.
Currently, week 35 sales will be offered into week 36, unless there are lingering problems that need to be dealt with.
Fox & Lillie is maintaining constant dialogue with both Talman and main Wool industry bodies and are confident this issue will be resolved by Sunday with a view to complete auctions as per normal in week 36.
We will endeavour to keep all our clients up to date with the current situation.