🔗 Share this article

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

This industrial unit is largely newly built, but its machinery is not: it comes from the former Miteni plant in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni ceased operations in 2018 after one of the worst ecological controversies in the nation’s modern record: after decades of producing persistent PFAS compounds, the company’s management was prosecuted for polluting water sources in an region home to 350,000 people. In June, previous company leaders were convicted at the local tribunal of environmental damage and other charges and given prison sentences, 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 intellectual property and methods – everything needed to manufacture Pfas – is now here in Lote Parshuram MIDC, a large industrial zone almost 4,000 miles away, wedged between villages and groves of trees. And the plant has recently begun to produce forever chemicals again.

An Environmental Burden

Once known for its specialism in creating methods for specialty compounds, Miteni is now infamous for the harmful aftermath it bequeathed. In 2011, scientists found exceptionally elevated concentrations of Pfas in the plant’s wastewater. Hundreds of thousands of inhabitants had been exposed through drinking water.

The most impacted were Miteni’s employees. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who worked for decades in its specialty chemicals division, displayed among the top levels of PFAS ever recorded in blood samples. “After the facts emerged, I looked at a list of medical conditions associated with Pfas, and found out I had them all,” says Ermetti.

High levels of PFAS in the bloodstream are associated with higher chances of malignancies, cardiovascular diseases, organ impairment, reproductive disorders and additional ailments. Ermetti is currently recovering from a recent surgical operation.

Public Apprehensions

Michela Piccoli, 51, a nurse and campaigner with Mamme No Pfas, began mobilizing after discovering her offspring’s blood tests indicated elevated amounts of persistent pollutants. When she learned that Miteni’s proprietary information and machinery were being transferred to India, she was shocked.

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

Corporate Transition

After Miteni went bankrupt, its assets were bought in 2019 by Viva Lifesciences, a subsidiary of the Indian chemical company Laxmi Organic Industries – the only bidder in the public auction. By the start of 2023, the complete machinery was being shipped en route to Mumbai. Meanwhile, Laxmi was boasting of its recent purchase to investors. Transcripts of shareholders’ meetings indicate that Laxmi’s management downplayed environmental concerns, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, declaring that Miteni was “operating lawfully in compliance with European standards”.

Goenka is a member on the board of Laxmi Organic Italy, a company established in 2021. Also included is Antonio Nardone, the last chief executive of Miteni, who was found guilty of ecological offenses and financial misreporting at the recent court case and sentenced to six years and four months in prison. Per a ex-supervisor requesting confidentiality, Nardone was taking business trips to India prior to the company went bankrupt.

Although Laxmi bought Miteni’s properties in June 2019, the environmental assessment report for the building of the plant in Lote reveals that in March 2018 the company was already intending to commence manufacturing fluorinated compounds matching Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries did not respond to inquiries.

Strategic Expansion

By 2021, Laxmi’s plan clearly outlined the objective to “capture [the] market share of Miteni” and emerge as a top player in the production of Pfas and fluorochemicals. Shipping records show that, to secure validation on the standard of the compounds, in 2024 Laxmi began distributing samples to companies with previous commercial ties with Miteni, including BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.

Since early 2025, Laxmi’s location in Lote Parshuram has been completely active, manufacturing substances that will be utilized for pesticides, pharmaceuticals, colorants, cosmetics and other products.

Environmental Oversight

Studies have shown that levels of forever chemicals in the ecosystem are worryingly elevated, particularly around production sites. 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 national authorities as of today,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an ecological scientist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Autonomous study teams across India have conducted studies in different states. But these studies are limited in scope, and there are still very few of them.”

Regional Consequences

Parineeta Dandekar, coordinator of the regional environmental group, says the Lote Parshuram industrial district “has a poor ecological history”. After it was established in 1986, “the livelihood of fishing populations in this region totally deteriorated,” she said.

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

“Nearby communities have always stated that it’s not working properly,” said Dandekar. “When there is no electricity, a frequent event in rural Maharashtra state, the facility fails to operate and industries discharge contaminated effluent directly into the waterways.” Regulatory bodies have sent several warning letters to the site in the past few years.

International Ramifications

In the EU, the European Chemical Agency is examining a plan to ban the production, import and utilization of more than 10,000 forever chemicals. 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 issue should be examined, because the reality that Miteni’s operations, intellectual assets and machinery have been transferred to a country like India should lead us to reflect, at the very least, on the power that these global corporations have to relocate in nations where there is evidently a race to the bottom in terms of environmental protection.”

Persistent Threats

Miteni has closed down, but the firm’s harmful impact lives on – at the contaminated site in Vicenza, and in Lote. The medical effects associated with PFAS manufacturing are likely to affect populations that are facing an unsafe environment for years to come.

“That region has experienced sufficient environmental destruction by now,” says Dandekar. “Should additional hazardous firms move in, it’s perpetually concerning.”