The owners of the indoor vertical farming company AeroFarms in Pittsylvania County hope to sell the business this month.
If they can’t, they say they’ll shut down the facility in Ringgold between March 17 and March 31, laying off 145 employees, of whom 115 are Virginia residents.
A few employees might stay longer to wind down operations at the facility, which is in an industrial park near the North Carolina border co-owned by the county and the city of Danville.
A Feb. 27 letter from AeroFarms to the city states that the two companies that own AeroFarms — New AeroFarms Inc. and AeroFarms Danville Farming Company LLC — are now “working through the diligence and sale process with the potential buyer.”
“The Companies’ goal is to close on the transaction in March 2026. Due to this development, their lender has agreed to provide additional short-term funding to continue core operations of the Facility for a period of time,” states the letter from Carlos Nunez, AeroFarms’ vice president of human resources.
Messages to Nunez and the company’s media contact were not returned Tuesday.
AeroFarms produces leafy greens and microgreens such as broccoli and kale at a 140,000-square-foot vertical farming facility. The company has sold its goods at stores including Walmart and Whole Foods.
The letter is the latest in a series of notices since December in which the company has described its efforts to secure enough money to remain open while warning that permanent closure could be imminent.
In a Dec. 11 letter, AeroFarms said it would close the Pittsylvania facility effective Dec. 19. At that time, the company said it had 173 employees, of whom 127 lived in Virginia.
AeroFarms said the closure was because its largest investor had an “unannounced restructuring and change in priorities.”
The company has said that its Dec. 11 letter and subsequent updates were sent to comply with the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN Act, which requires employers to provide advance notice of mass layoffs.
On Dec. 19, the company said that an existing investor would provide enough money to keep the company’s core operations going until Jan. 16.
On Jan. 14, the company said that it had received an additional round of short-term funding and could continue operating until Feb. 27.
New Jersey-based AeroFarms opened the Pittsylvania site, its second location, in 2022 with a $42 million investment.
AeroFarms filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2023 and emerged from it in September of that year.
The new owners closed other facilities and continued producing microgreens in Pittsylvania County.
In August 2025, the company announced it had refinanced its debt to continue supporting its Pittsylvania County operations.