🔗 Share this article

The lush green jungle and reddish-brown hills of Lote, located on India’s west coast, lead to a small hill where a industrial facility stands against the sky.

The factory is largely newly built, but its machinery is far from new: it comes from the defunct Miteni plant in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni closed down in 2018 after among the most severe environmental scandals in the country’s recent history: after years of manufacturing Pfas forever chemicals, the firm’s leadership was prosecuted for polluting water resources in an region inhabited by 350,000 residents. In June, its former executives were found guilty at the Vicenza court of environmental damage and other charges and given prison sentences, which they are expected to appeal against.

Understanding PFAS: Toxicity Levels and Exposure Routes

And yet, all of the company’s equipment, its intellectual property and processes – everything needed to produce forever chemicals – is now here in Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave thousands of miles distant, sandwiched among local communities and wooded areas. And the factory has recently begun to produce forever chemicals again.

A Toxic Legacy

Once known for its specialism in developing processes for advanced chemicals, Miteni is now infamous for the toxic legacy it left behind. In 2011, scientists found extraordinarily high concentrations of Pfas in the plant’s wastewater. Hundreds of thousands of inhabitants had been exposed through potable water.

The most impacted were Miteni’s own workers. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who worked for decades in its specialty chemicals division, showed one of the highest concentrations of Pfas documented in blood samples. “After the facts emerged, I reviewed a list of medical conditions associated with Pfas, and discovered I had them all,” says Ermetti.

High levels of Pfas in the blood are linked to higher chances of malignancies, heart conditions, organ impairment, reproductive disorders and additional ailments. Ermetti is presently recuperating from a recent medical procedure.

Community Concerns

Michela Piccoli, 51, a nurse and activist with Mothers Against PFAS, began mobilizing after discovering her offspring’s blood tests indicated high levels of forever chemicals. When she found out that Miteni’s patents and equipment were being transferred to India, she was stunned.

“Being parents, as females, our anxiety has increased,” she said. “Since our kids are the children of all.”

Business Shift

After Miteni went bankrupt, its assets were acquired in 2019 by a pharmaceutical firm, a branch of the domestic chemical corporation Laxmi Organic Industries – the sole participant in the open sale. By the start of 2023, all the equipment was travelling on freight ships en route to Mumbai. At the same time, Laxmi was boasting of its new acquisition to investors. Records of shareholders’ meetings show that Laxmi’s management downplayed environmental concerns, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, stating that Miteni was “operating lawfully according to EU regulations”.

Goenka is a member on the board of Laxmi Organic the Italian branch, a company founded in 2021. Another is Antonio Nardone, the final CEO of Miteni, who was convicted of ecological offenses and financial misreporting at the June trial and sentenced to six years and four months in jail. According to a former mid-level manager requesting confidentiality, Nardone was taking business trips to India prior to the firm’s collapse.

While Laxmi purchased Miteni’s properties in June 2019, the environmental assessment report for the building of the plant in Lote shows that in March 2018 the company was already intending to start producing fluorochemicals matching Miteni’s offerings. Laxmi Organic Industries declined to answer requests for comment.

Growth Plans

By 2021, Laxmi’s strategy clearly outlined the goal to “capture [the] market share of Miteni” and emerge as a top player in the manufacturing of Pfas and specialty chemicals. Logistics data show that, to get approval on the quality of the chemicals, in 2024 Laxmi started sending out test batches to firms with previous commercial ties with Miteni, including BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.

From the beginning of 2025, Laxmi’s location in Lote Parshuram has been fully operational, producing chemicals that will be used in pesticides, pharmaceuticals, dyes, beauty products and other products.

Environmental Oversight

Investigations demonstrate that concentrations of persistent pollutants in the ecosystem are worryingly elevated, particularly around manufacturing facilities. But even though international attention is increasing, in India the issue is not yet a policy priority.

“If we look at the regulations, [Pfas] is absent in those standards. It’s unacknowledged by the Indian government as of today,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an environmental chemist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Independent research groups across India have performed research in different states. But this work are limited in scope, and there are still only a handful.”

Local Impact

Parineeta Dandekar, head of the regional environmental group, says the Lote Parshuram industrial district “has a dismal environmental track record”. After it was established in 1986, “the income source of fishing populations in this region totally deteriorated,” she said.

The chemical district is dependent on a shared effluent treatment facility that has been at the forefront of complaints.

“Nearby communities have consistently reported that it’s malfunctioning,” said Dandekar. “During power outages, a common occurrence in the countryside, the facility fails to operate and industries discharge polluted water directly into the streams.” Environmental authorities have sent multiple notices to the plant in the past few years.

Global Implications

In the EU, the regulatory agency is reviewing a proposal to ban the production, importation and use of more than 10,000 persistent compounds. This scrutiny may be pushing the sector to the global south, according to Claudia Marcolungo, a legal scholar at the University of Padua. “I believe that this matter should be examined, because the reality that Miteni’s production, patents and machinery have been transferred to a country like India should lead us to reflect, at the very least, on the influence that these global corporations have to move in countries where there is clearly a lowering of standards in terms of ecological safeguards.”

Persistent Threats

Miteni has shut down, but the company’s toxic legacy continues – at the contaminated site in Vicenza, and in Lote. The medical effects linked to PFAS manufacturing are expected to impact communities that are facing an hazardous setting for generations.

“The area has seen enough ecological damage already,” says Dandekar. “Should additional hazardous firms establish presence, it’s always a risk.”