Connecting producer to Aiven Kafka not working

aiven_kafka_producer.js

// Ensure process.env contains all the needed environment variables.

const kafka = require('node-rdkafka')
console.log(JSON.stringify(kafka.features))
// ["gzip","snappy","ssl","sasl","regex","lz4","sasl_gssapi","sasl_plain","sasl_scram","plugins","zstd","sasl_oauthbearer"]

const createProducer = (onDeliveryReport) => {
    const producer = new kafka.Producer({
        'metadata.broker.list': process.env.KAFKA_BROKERS_LIST,
        'sasl.username': process.env.KAFKA_CLIENT_USERNAME,
        'sasl.password': process.env.KAFKA_CLIENT_PASSWORD,
        'security.protocol': 'SASL_SSL',
        'sasl.mechanisms': 'PLAIN',
        'dr_msg_cb': true
    })

    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        producer
            .on('ready', () => { resolve(producer) })
            .on('event.error', (err) => { reject(err) })
            .on('delivery-report', onDeliveryReport)
      
        producer.connect() // <-- THIS IS WHERE EXECUTION HANGS
    })
}

async function produceMessage(msg) {
  producer = await createProducer((err, report) => {
      console.log(`DELIVERY_REPORT: Error ${err}`)
      console.log(`DELIVERY_REPORT: Report ${report}`)
  })

  // THE LINES BELOW NEVER EXECUTE.
  producer.produce(process.env.PRODUCE_TOPIC, -1, Buffer.from(JSON.stringify(msg)))
  
  console.log(`produced ${msg}`)
}

produceMessage("hello kafka")

// NOTE: The code execution goes like this (line-by-line): 39 -> 28 -> 8 -> 18 -> 23 [HANGS]