Employees of a Camarillo-based company that designs biodegradable food containers were notified Tuesday that the factory was winding down operations.

Zume Inc. CEO Annette Groenink said in an email the company has yet to set a date for the closure.

“We’ve made great strides on our mission to enable a future free from single-use plastics, and we’ll continue to work with our partners to see through on this mission,” she wrote.

The decision follows a November announcement that the company would be laying off 62 of its 140 employees by the end of January to restructure the business.

As of Wednesday, there were 31 employees left at the Camarillo factory, Groenink said.

Tom Ridderbush, a senior mechanical engineer who was laid off earlier this month, said potential investors have toured the facility since the November layoffs were announced.

"I could see the writing on the wall," Ridderbush said. "I could see the place was going under."

Founded in 2015, Zume got its start delivering pizzas made by robots in Silicon Valley. The company, then based in Mountain View, raised about $423 million in venture capital, according to a 2019 story in Crunchbase News, which tracks such investments.

Zume later acquired Camarillo-based Pivot Packaging in 2019, Crunchbase reported. Then in 2020, the company stopped making pizzas to focus on sustainable food packaging shortly after acquiring Pivot Packaging. The Camarillo-based business was creating compostable food containers made from sugar cane fibers.

With the closure of Zume Pizza, the company's workforce was reduced by about 53%, Crunchbase reported at the time.

Another local company, Thousand Oaks-based Amgen, announced its own round of layoffs, the second this year.

In a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, commonly called a WARN noticed, the biotech giant said it is laying off 425 employees effective May 26.

Less than 5% of the layoffs are in Thousand Oaks, the company said in a statement.

In January, the company announced about 300 people would be laid off.

With about 5,500 local employees, Amgen is Ventura County's largest private employer.

-- Staff writer Tony Biasotti contributed to this story.

Brian J. Varela covers Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Camarillo. He can be reached at brian.varela@vcstar.com or 805-477-8014. You can also find him on Twitter @BrianVarela805.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Camarillo-based Zume Inc. announces packaging plant closure