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

This industrial unit is almost brand new, but its equipment is far from new: it comes from the defunct Miteni plant in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni closed down in 2018 after one of the worst environmental scandals in the nation’s modern record: after years of manufacturing Pfas forever chemicals, the company’s management was prosecuted for contaminating water sources in an area inhabited by 350,000 residents. In June, its former executives were found guilty at the Vicenza court of environmental damage and additional offenses and sentenced to jail, with appeals anticipated.

Understanding PFAS: Toxicity Levels and Exposure Routes

Nevertheless, all of the company’s equipment, its intellectual property and processes – all required components to produce Pfas – is now here in Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave almost 4,000 miles away, wedged between local communities and groves of trees. And the plant has just started to resume PFAS production.

A Toxic Legacy

Previously recognized for its expertise in developing processes for specialty compounds, Miteni is now infamous for the toxic legacy it left behind. In 2011, researchers found extraordinarily high concentrations of PFAS compounds in the facility’s effluent. Hundreds of thousands of inhabitants had been subjected through potable water.

The worst-affected were Miteni’s employees. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who worked for decades in its fluorinated chemical department, showed among the top levels of PFAS documented in human blood. “After the facts emerged, I reviewed a list of medical conditions associated with PFAS, and discovered I had them all,” states Ermetti.

High levels of Pfas in the bloodstream are linked to increased risk of cancer, heart conditions, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders and more. Ermetti is currently recovering from a recent surgical operation.

Public Apprehensions

Michela Piccoli, 51, a nurse and activist with Mothers Against PFAS, started organizing after discovering her offspring’s blood tests showed elevated amounts of persistent pollutants. When she learned that Miteni’s proprietary information and equipment were being sent to India, she was stunned.

“As mothers, as females, our concern has grown,” she said. “Because our children are the children of all.”

Business Shift

After Miteni went bankrupt, its holdings were bought in 2019 by a pharmaceutical firm, a branch of the domestic chemical corporation Laxmi Organic Industries – the only bidder in the open sale. By early 2023, all the equipment was being shipped en route to Mumbai. Meanwhile, Laxmi was boasting of its new acquisition to shareholders. Records of shareholders’ meetings show that Laxmi’s management minimized ecological worries, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, stating that Miteni was “operating lawfully according to European standards”.

Goenka is one of the three men on the board of Laxmi Organic Italy, 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. According to a former mid-level manager speaking on condition of anonymity, Nardone was traveling for work to India months before the company went bankrupt.

Although Laxmi bought Miteni’s assets in June 2019, the ecological review for the construction of the factory in Lote reveals that in March 2018 the firm was already planning to commence manufacturing fluorinated compounds matching Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries did not respond to inquiries.

Growth Plans

By 2021, Laxmi’s strategy explicitly spelled out the goal to “acquire the customer base of Miteni” and emerge as a top player in the production of PFAS and specialty chemicals. Shipping records indicate that, to get approval on the standard of the chemicals, in 2024 Laxmi started sending out samples 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 fully operational, manufacturing substances that will be used in pesticides, pharmaceuticals, colorants, beauty products and additional goods.

Regulatory Context

Studies demonstrate that levels of persistent pollutants in the ecosystem are worryingly elevated, particularly around manufacturing facilities. But even though global focus is growing, in India the matter is not on the political agenda yet.

“Examining the rules, [Pfas] is absent in those standards. It’s unacknowledged by the Indian government 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 various regions. But this work are limited in scope, and there are still very few of them.”

Local Impact

Parineeta Dandekar, head of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, and People, says the Lote Parshuram industrial district “has a dismal environmental track record”. After it was established in 1986, “the income source of fisher folk communities in this region totally deteriorated,” she said.

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

“Nearby communities have always stated that it’s malfunctioning,” said Dandekar. “When there is no electricity, a common occurrence in the countryside, the plant fails to operate and industries release contaminated effluent straight into the streams.” Regulatory bodies have sent several warning letters to the plant in recent years.

Global Implications

In the EU, the European Chemical Agency is reviewing a proposal to prohibit the production, importation and utilization of over ten thousand forever chemicals. This scrutiny may be pushing the industry to the global south, per Claudia Marcolungo, a professor of environmental law at the University of Padua. “I think 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, minimally, on the influence that these multinationals have to move in countries where there is clearly a race to the bottom in terms of environmental protection.”

Persistent Threats

Miteni has shut down, but the company’s toxic legacy lives on – at the polluted location in Vicenza, and in Lote. The health impacts linked to Pfas production are likely to affect populations that are already struggling with an hazardous setting for generations.

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