The owners of AeroFarms, an indoor vertical farming company in Pittsylvania County, now anticipate that the business will be sold in April after “normal delays inherent in the transaction process” pushed back the timeline.
The owners previously estimated that the sale would close in late March.
The pending sale was first announced in late February and marked a turnaround from December, when the two companies that own AeroFarms — New AeroFarms Inc. and AeroFarms Danville Farming Company LLC — said that they would close the Pittsylvania site because AeroFarms’ largest investor had changed priorities.
“The Companies’ lender has agreed to provide additional short-term funding to continue core operations of the Facility for a period of time,” Carlos Nunez, AeroFarms’ vice president of human resources, said in a letter Friday to local officials.
Nunez declined to comment to Cardinal News on Monday.
Permanent closure of the facility remains a possibility. Nunez said in Friday’s letter that if the sale doesn’t go through and AeroFarms can’t get additional money to pursue other options, the facility could shut down between April 17 and April 30.
That would mean layoffs for 133 people, of whom 106 are Virginia residents. The facility sits near the North Carolina border.
AeroFarms produces leafy greens and microgreens such as broccoli and kale at a 140,000-square-foot vertical farming operation in the Cane Creek Centre, an industrial park jointly owned by Pittsylvania County and Danville.
In December, AeroFarms’ owners announced that the Pittsylvania facility would close that month, resulting in 173 jobs lost, because its largest investor had an “unannounced restructuring and change in priorities.”
In subsequent updates, the owners have announced funding to keep going and then a potential sale in the works. Each update has pushed back the date on which AeroFarms could close if things don’t work out.
The company has said that those 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.
New Jersey-based AeroFarms first opened the Pittsylvania site in 2022. The company filed for, and emerged from, Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023. In August 2025, AeroFarms announced it had refinanced debt to continue supporting its Pittsylvania County operations.