Danone is closing its 25-year-old Bridgeton, New Jersey plant-based facility and laying off 114 workers, even as it doubles down on high-protein and ready-to-drink plant-based bets elsewhere.
The headline reads like a retreat. The fuller picture is messier.
Danone is closing its plant-based dairy facility in Bridgeton, New Jersey, eliminating 114 jobs between August and November, as reported by Food Dive. The Bridgeton plant produced Silk and So Delicious milks and creamers, two of the most recognizable names in the US dairy alternative aisle. According to Green Queen, Danone filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification with the state of New Jersey ahead of the shutdown. Production of Silk and So Delicious will be consolidated into existing facilities in Virginia, Texas, and Florida.
The Bridgeton site opened in 2001 and was described by the company as the first soy protein extraction facility in the United States and the first Danone site to reach 'zero waste to landfill' status. Danone said the closure is part of efforts to restructure its manufacturing network and focus investments on core US operations.
The closure follows comments from Danone CFO and deputy CEO Juergen Esser reportedly describing the company's North American plant-based business as underperforming in 2025. The numbers track. Retail sales of non-dairy milk fell 2% to $2.7 billion in 2025, even though it remains the largest segment within the plant-based category.
Within that decline, the picture splinters. Soy milk sales rose, coconut milk jumped significantly, and non-dairy creamers and yogurts showed growth. The category isn't collapsing. It's sorting itself into winners and losers.
Europe tells a different story entirely. Danone's Alpro brand posted high single-digit growth, and Alpro now captures a majority of the vegan yogurt market across the continent. That segment accounts for a substantial portion of Alpro's overall revenue, with sales expanding by double digits.
The contrast points to something the Bridgeton closure obscures: Danone isn't exiting plant-based. It's repositioning. The company recently acquired Kate Farms and Huel, both plant-based nutrition brands operating in the ready-to-drink beverage segment, which saw strong sales growth last year. It also launched Silk Protein, a soy milk line with high protein content per serving, aimed squarely at consumers chasing the high-protein wave that has, by some accounts, pulled spending back toward dairy. The Guardian recently documented how the protein boom has cut into demand for plant-based alternatives in several markets.
What the closure really signals is the end of the first chapter of mainstream plant-based dairy in the US. The Bridgeton plant was a 2001 bet on a category that didn't yet exist at scale. Twenty-five years later, the category exists, but it has fragmented. Generic almond and oat milk no longer carry the growth story. High-protein, functional, and ready-to-drink formats do.
For the 114 workers in Bridgeton, that distinction means very little. For the broader question of whether plant-based has plateaued or simply matured, it matters quite a bit. A 2% category dip is not the same as a collapse, and a corporation closing a flagship plant while acquiring three others in adjacent segments is not abandoning the bet. It's relocating the chips.
The next phase of plant-based won't be won by the brands that built the category. It'll be won by whoever owns the formats that replaced it: high-protein ready-to-drink shakes competing with whey, functional beverages stacked with adaptogens and fiber, and medical and meal-replacement nutrition lines like Kate Farms and Huel. The carton on the shelf was the entry point. The growth now lives in the bottle, the pouch, and the powder.
