Cloud manager pipeline - PAT token -401 unauthorized to build maven artifacts

Hi

i have been using PAT token set as pipeline variable and the deployment fails with a message “please check the credentials .. unable to build artifacts “ etc 

the npmrc files are stored under ui.frontend and ui.frontend.react. The authentication is in the npmrc file with the token/pwd as mentioned in the pipeline variable and is a base 64 encoded PAT token generated

This was working in the past but now fails