AeroFarms to close Pittsylvania operations; 173 to lose jobs

In April 2023, AeroFarms, a vertical farming operation, transferred its New Jersey commercial production to its commercial farm at Cane Creek Centre, a joint industrial park for the city of Danville and Pittsylvania County, in Ringgold. A few months later, AeroFarms filed for voluntary protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code; however, the company pledged to keep up its efforts in Southern Virginia.

“We are fortunate to have existing investors who continue to believe in AeroFarms and are confident that we can hit our targeted profitable operations for our Danville farm,” Guy Blanchard, who was then president and chief financial officer of AeroFarms, stated in a June 2023 news release.

Putting all their eggs in the Danville-area basket, however, doesn’t seem to have worked out. In a letter to the to the state’s Department of Workforce Development and Advancement, aka Virginia Works, dated Dec. 11, Carlos Nunez, vice president of human resources for AeroFarms, explained that New AeroFarms, an entity formed in Virginia in 2023 connected to a Cane Creek Centre address, and AeroFarms Danville Farming Co., an entity formed in 2024 in Virginia connected to the same address, plans to end operations Friday at the Ringgold facility. The letter states 173 employees will lose their jobs. Of those, 127 workers live in Virginia.

“Recently, we were informed that, contrary to the companies’ expectations, the companies’ largest investor decided to withdraw any further financial investment  … due in whole or in part to the investor’s unannounced restructuring and change in priorities,” Nunez stated in the letter.

AeroFarms attempted to negotiate an extension with the investor or secure other funding, but those efforts failed, according to the notification.

AeroFarms wasn’t able to provide 60 days notice to employees before the mass layoff as typically required by the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act because doing that could have kept the company from obtaining funding from other sources, Nunez stated.

“They have come to the conclusion that they cannot continue operations until they are able to obtain new funding from other sources,” the letter noted.

The layoffs are expected to be permanent. The workers do not belong to a union and do not have bumping rights, Nunez stated.

AeroFarms did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

Nunez appears to be among the 173 who will lose their jobs, according to a list included with the letter sent to Virginia Works. His LinkedIn page states he only started work at AeroFarms in June. The company’s CEO and chief financial officer are also losing their jobs. The majority of the laid-off workers were process operators and technicians.

Although AeroFarms had been headquartered in New Jersey since 2015, Danville has been the company’s official headquarters since September 2023, a spokesperson for the company told Virginia Business in March. 

“This came really out of the blue,” Ken Larking, Danville’s city manager, said Monday afternoon. “We’re doing what we can to support people. It’s extremely disappointing. The employees had very little notice. I don’t know what [AeroFarms’] plans are to support employees or not support employees.”

Refinancing debt

On Aug. 7, AeroFarms announced it had refinanced its debt to support ongoing operations at its farm at the Cane Creek Centre and had raised equity financing to support existing operations and fund pre-construction activities for its expansion to a second farm.

Equity was provided by existing investors including Grosvenor Food & AgTech, a London-based investor in food and agriculture companies; Ingka Investments, a South Holland-based investor; and Cibus Capital, a London-based investment adviser in sustainable food and agriculture, according to the news release.

Siguler Guff, a New York-based private markets investment firm, provided AeroFarms with an asset-based loan to pay off previous debt facility from Horizon Technology Finance, a Connecticut-based venture lending platform, according to the news release.

“We are excited to partner with AeroFarms in Danville, Virginia, to help them reach their full operational capacity,” Matthew Bernstein, managing director in Siguler Guff’s credit and special situations strategy, said in a statement.

The vertical indoor farming business isn’t currently flourishing.

Plenty Unlimited, a vertical indoor farming company based in California, opened a berry farm in Richmond in 2024. It’s designed to produce more than 4 million pounds of strawberries annually in less than 40,000 square feet by growing the fruit vertically on 30-foot towers.

The company filed for bankruptcy in March. However, by May, Plenty announced it had successfully emerged from Chapter 11, after the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas confirmed its reorganization plan.

During a groundbreaking ceremony for the Pittsylvania County farm in 2021, AeroFarms said the facility would operate with agSTACK technology, which creates a connected and digitally controlled farm that yields annual productivity up to 390 times greater than traditional farming in a field, while also using 95% less water and zero pesticides.

In October, AeroFarms announced that its microgreens were available in about 2,500 stores nationwide, including at 750 stores added in 2025. A July announcement celebrated that the company’s Micro Broccoli, Rainbow Mix, Micro Kale and Super Mix could now be found inside Harris Teeter stores chainwide.

A May article in Fast Company noted that AeroFarms had been profitable for two recent quarters, even while other vertical farming companies struggled.

“The basic business model — growing crops like leafy greens indoors on tall vertical towers — hasn’t proven that it can work. But AeroFarms… has managed to turn itself around,” the article stated.

Editor’s note: Kate Andrews contributed to this article.