🔗 Share this article

The lush green jungle and rust-red elevations of Lote, located on India’s west coast, give way to a small hill where a industrial facility stands under the open sky.

The factory is largely newly built, but its equipment is far from new: it originates from the former Miteni plant in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni ceased operations in 2018 after one of the worst environmental scandals in the nation’s modern record: after years of manufacturing persistent PFAS compounds, the firm’s leadership was prosecuted for contaminating water resources in an area home to 350,000 residents. In June, previous company leaders were found guilty at the local tribunal of causing environmental pollution and other charges and sentenced to jail, with appeals anticipated.

Understanding PFAS: Toxicity Levels and Exposure Routes

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

An Environmental Burden

Once known for its expertise in creating methods for advanced chemicals, Miteni is now infamous for the harmful aftermath it bequeathed. In 2011, scientists found exceptionally elevated levels of Pfas in the facility’s effluent. Numerous of residents had been subjected through potable water.

The most impacted 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 documented in blood samples. “When the story came to light, I looked at a list of medical conditions related to Pfas, and discovered I had them all,” says Ermetti.

Elevated concentrations of PFAS in the blood are associated with higher chances of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, organ impairment, fertility issues and more. Ermetti is presently recuperating from a recent medical procedure.

Public Apprehensions

Michela Piccoli, 51, a nurse and campaigner with Mamme No Pfas, started organizing after learning her offspring’s blood tests indicated elevated amounts of forever chemicals. When she found out 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

Following Miteni’s insolvency, its holdings were acquired in 2019 by a pharmaceutical firm, a subsidiary of the domestic chemical corporation Laxmi Organic Industries – the only bidder in the public auction. By the start of 2023, the complete machinery was travelling on freight ships en route to Mumbai. At the same time, Laxmi was boasting of its recent purchase to shareholders. Records of shareholders’ meetings indicate that Laxmi’s management downplayed ecological worries, with its president, Harshvardhan Goenka, declaring that Miteni was “doing everything legally according to European standards”.

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 last chief executive of Miteni, who was found guilty of ecological offenses and false accounting at the recent court case and sentenced to six years and four months in prison. Per a former mid-level manager speaking on condition of anonymity, Nardone was traveling for work to India months before the firm’s collapse.

While Laxmi purchased Miteni’s properties in June 2019, the environmental assessment report for the construction of the plant in Lote shows that in March 2018 the company was already intending to start producing fluorinated compounds matching Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries did not respond to requests for comment.

Strategic Expansion

By 2021, Laxmi’s strategy explicitly spelled out the objective to “acquire the customer base of Miteni” and emerge as a top player in the production of Pfas and specialty chemicals. Shipping records show that, to secure validation on the standard of the chemicals, in 2024 Laxmi began distributing test batches to companies with past business relationships with Miteni, including BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.

Since early 2025, Laxmi’s site in Lote Parshuram has been completely active, producing chemicals that will be used in agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, dyes, cosmetics and additional goods.

Regulatory Context

Studies have shown that concentrations of persistent pollutants in the environment are alarmingly high, especially near production sites. But even though global focus is growing, in India the matter is not yet a policy priority.

“Examining the rules, [Pfas] is absent in such guidelines. It’s not recognised by the Indian government currently,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an environmental chemist at the academic institution. “Independent research groups across India have performed research in different states. But this work are limited in scope, and there are still very few of them.”

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 established in 1986, “the income source of fishing populations in this area completely collapsed,” she said.

The industrial area is dependent on a centralised wastewater treatment plant that has been frequently criticized.

“The local villages have always stated that it’s not working properly,” said Dandekar. “When there is no electricity, a frequent event in rural Maharashtra state, the plant cannot function and factories release contaminated effluent directly into the streams.” Environmental authorities have issued multiple notices to the plant in the past few years.

Global Implications

In the EU, the European Chemical Agency is examining a plan to prohibit the production, importation and utilization of over ten thousand forever chemicals. This attention may be pushing the sector to the developing nations, according to Claudia Marcolungo, a professor of environmental law at the University of Padua. “I think that this issue should be investigated, because the fact that Miteni’s operations, patents and equipment have been relocated to a nation like India should lead us to reflect, minimally, on the influence that these multinationals have to relocate in countries where there is clearly a race to the bottom in terms of environmental protection.”

Persistent Threats

Miteni has closed down, but the firm’s harmful impact continues – 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 generations.

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