🔗 Share this article

The dense tropical forest and rust-red elevations of Lote, situated along India’s west coast, lead to a modest rise where a industrial facility stands under the open sky.

The factory is almost brand new, but its equipment is far from new: it comes from the former Miteni factory in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni closed down in 2018 following one of the worst environmental scandals in the nation’s modern record: after decades of producing Pfas forever chemicals, the company’s management was brought to trial for polluting water sources in an region home to 350,000 people. In June, its former executives were convicted at the Vicenza court of environmental damage and other charges and sentenced to jail, which they are expected to appeal against.

What are PFAS, how toxic are they and how do you become exposed?

And yet, all of the company’s equipment, its patents and processes – everything needed to produce Pfas – is now located at Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave almost 4,000 miles away, sandwiched among villages and groves of trees. And the factory has just started to produce forever chemicals again.

A Toxic Legacy

Once known for its expertise in developing processes for advanced chemicals, Miteni is now notorious for the harmful aftermath it bequeathed. In 2011, scientists found exceptionally elevated concentrations of Pfas in the plant’s wastewater. Numerous of inhabitants had been exposed through drinking water.

The worst-affected were Miteni’s own workers. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who worked for decades in its fluorinated chemical department, displayed one of the highest concentrations of PFAS ever recorded in human blood. “After the facts emerged, I looked at a catalog of health issues related to PFAS, and found out I had them all,” says Ermetti.

High levels of Pfas in the blood are associated with higher chances of malignancies, cardiovascular diseases, organ impairment, fertility issues and additional ailments. Ermetti is presently recuperating from a recent surgical operation.

Community Concerns

Michela Piccoli, 51, a nurse and campaigner with Mamme No Pfas, started organizing after discovering her offspring’s blood tests showed high levels of forever chemicals. When she learned that Miteni’s patents and machinery were being transferred to India, she was stunned.

“As mothers, as women, our concern has grown,” she said. “Because our children are everyone’s children.”

Corporate Transition

After Miteni went bankrupt, its holdings were acquired in 2019 by Viva Lifesciences, a branch of the domestic chemical corporation Laxmi Organic Industries – the sole participant in the public auction. By the start of 2023, the complete machinery was travelling on freight ships heading to Mumbai. At the same time, Laxmi was boasting of its new acquisition to shareholders. Transcripts of investor gatherings show that Laxmi’s management minimized ecological worries, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, stating that Miteni was “operating lawfully in compliance with EU regulations”.

Goenka is one of the three men on the board of Laxmi Organic the Italian branch, a company established 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 given six years and four months in prison. Per a former mid-level manager speaking on condition of anonymity, Nardone was taking business trips to India months before the firm’s collapse.

Although Laxmi purchased Miteni’s assets in June 2019, the environmental assessment report for the building of the plant in Lote reveals that in March 2018 the firm was already intending to start producing fluorochemicals compatible with Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries did not respond to inquiries.

Strategic Expansion

By 2021, Laxmi’s strategy explicitly spelled out the goal to “acquire the customer base of Miteni” and become a leader in the manufacturing of Pfas and specialty chemicals. Logistics data indicate that, to get approval on the standard of the compounds, in 2024 Laxmi began distributing test batches to companies with past business relationships with Miteni, including BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.

From the beginning of 2025, Laxmi’s location in Lote Parshuram has been completely active, manufacturing substances that will be utilized for agrochemicals, medicines, colorants, beauty products and additional goods.

Regulatory Context

Studies demonstrate that levels of persistent pollutants in the environment are alarmingly high, especially near production sites. But although global focus is increasing, in India the issue is not on the political agenda yet.

“If we look at the regulations, [Pfas] is absent in such guidelines. It’s unacknowledged by the national authorities currently,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an ecological scientist at the academic institution. “Autonomous study teams across India have conducted studies in different states. But these studies are limited in scope, and there are still only a handful.”

Regional Consequences

Parineeta Dandekar, head of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, and People, says the Lote Parshuram industrial district “has a poor ecological history”. After it was set up in 1986, “the livelihood of fisher folk communities in this region completely collapsed,” she said.

The industrial area is served by a centralised wastewater treatment plant that has been at the forefront of complaints.

“The local villages have always stated that it’s not working properly,” said Dandekar. “During power outages, a frequent event in the countryside, the plant fails to operate and industries discharge contaminated effluent directly into the streams.” Regulatory bodies have sent multiple notices to the site in the past few years.

International Ramifications

In the EU, the regulatory agency is examining a plan to ban the manufacture, import and utilization of over ten thousand persistent compounds. This scrutiny may be pushing the sector to the developing nations, per Claudia Marcolungo, a professor of environmental law at the University of Padua. “I believe that this matter should be investigated, because the fact that Miteni’s operations, patents and machinery have been relocated to a nation like India should lead us to reflect, at the very least, on the power that these multinationals have to move in nations where there is evidently a lowering of standards in terms of ecological safeguards.”

Persistent Threats

Miteni has shut down, but the company’s toxic legacy lives on – at the contaminated site in Vicenza, and in Lote. The health impacts linked to PFAS manufacturing are expected to impact populations that are already struggling with an hazardous setting for years to come.

“That region has experienced sufficient ecological damage already,” says Dandekar. “Should additional hazardous firms move in, it’s always a risk.”