Co-op chief executive Shirine Khoury-Haq said the business is nearing “full and complete recovery” from its recent cyber attack.

The convenience store chain has been battling with availability issues after it was forced to shut down parts of its IT system at the end of April after reporting a hack attempt.

It later confirmed that the hackers had gained access to customers’ data, including names and contact details. It assured that no passwords or any financial information such as bank or credit card details or transactions had been taken.

Khoury-Haq said the retailer had made “significant progress” on rebooting and stabilising its systems.

“While there is still work to do to unwind the operational and technical impacts of the actions we had to take to block the criminals, our systems are now stable, our Food stores again have more of the products our customers want and all our businesses are continuing to serve our member-owners,” she said.

“We are all grateful to our members-owners, clients and customers, for their patience over what has been a really difficult time. We have had so many of you check in on our colleagues, and on me, throughout the last few weeks – and we have all felt very much supported and cared for throughout. I will be forever thankful to all of you.”

Khoury-Haq continued: “Teams across our Co-op have worked day and night to recover – and our technology and information security colleagues are true superheroes.

“What they have done for us, our partners, our peers, our members and our customers in the face of a sustained and highly sophisticated attack was nothing short of heroic.

Khoury-Haq thanked the retailer’s store colleagues for their support and said the business is “coming out of this stronger and more effective than before”.

“Most of our recovery work from now on will be behind the scenes, so a big heartfelt thank you in advance to our support teams and our partners for your continued effort and focus.”

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