Buitoni USA LLC will permanently close its pasta and sauce facility at 201 Airside Drive in Danville, Virginia, on or about December 28, 2026, a move expected to separate all 251 employees from the company. No reason has been given for the shutdown, and affected workers have been told their job losses will be permanent.
The closure was laid out in a notice filed under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, as reported by WDBJ7. According to the notice, all 251 employees at the facility will be separated from employment, with every separation expected to take place on December 28. The station reports that affected employees will not have bumping rights because all positions at the plant are being eliminated entirely, leaving no roles for workers to shift into. Danville officials confirmed the closure to WSLS 10, which reported on October 30 that the plant will shut down on December 28, 2026.
A Plant That Once Employed More Than 500
The scale of the coming layoffs stands out against the facility's more recent history. When Buitoni Food Company struck a deal to acquire the North American Buitoni business from Nestlé USA in 2020, the Danville plant came with roughly 525 full-time employees, according to the Chatham Star-Tribune. That 2020 agreement included the 240,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, which the newspaper's report described as continuing to support the business under its existing workforce at the time of the sale.
By 2022, the Danville plant was still running strong enough to post new job openings. The same WDBJ7 outlet reported that year that the facility was producing Buitoni's refrigerated pastas and sauces and was looking to hire 80 additional full-time workers. Four years later, the workforce that once topped 500 and was still growing in 2022 is now set to be eliminated altogether.
Part Of A Wider Wave Of Food Industry Cuts
The Danville closure lands amid a broader reckoning across the food and beverage industry. Food producers had already announced 29,693 job cuts through September 2026, a 76% jump over the same period the year before, according to Food Dive. The outlet reported that layoffs accelerated through the year as companies struggled to adapt to declining consumer spending and a shift in eating habits, with food producers cutting 7,982 jobs in August alone and another 7,326 in September.
Other recent announcements echo the scale of what's happening in Danville. Food Dive reported that Amy's Kitchen plans to eliminate approximately 260 jobs while closing a California frozen-food plant, Sapporo USA plans to lay off 220 workers while closing craft brewing facilities, and Tyson plans to sell or end operations at three facilities while cutting at least 2,500 jobs. Nestlé itself, Buitoni's former parent company, announced it will close a factory in Solon, Ohio, by the end of 2027, gradually shifting pouch production to a Gaffney, South Carolina, plant, though it has not disclosed how many Solon employees will be affected.
Food and beverage manufacturers have been closing U.S. facilities in an effort to improve the efficiency of their networks, lower costs, and bring supply in line with consumer demand amid elevated prices, per Food Dive's reporting. Whether any of those broader industry pressures factored into the decision to close the Danville plant is not something Buitoni has addressed; as WDBJ7 noted, no reason has been given for the plant closure.
