The lush tropical forest and rust-red elevations of Lote, located on India’s western shoreline, 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 far from new: it originates from the defunct Miteni factory in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni ceased operations in 2018 after among the most severe environmental scandals in the country’s recent history: after decades of producing persistent PFAS compounds, the firm’s leadership was brought to trial for polluting water sources in an area inhabited by 350,000 residents. In June, previous company leaders were convicted at the local tribunal of causing environmental pollution and other charges and given prison sentences, which they are expected to appeal against.
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And yet, the entire operational setup, its intellectual property and methods – everything needed to produce forever chemicals – is now located at Lote Parshuram MIDC, a large industrial zone thousands of miles distant, sandwiched among local communities and groves of trees. And the factory has recently begun to resume PFAS production.
Previously recognized for its expertise in developing processes for advanced chemicals, Miteni is now infamous for the harmful aftermath it bequeathed. In 2011, scientists found extraordinarily high concentrations of PFAS compounds in the plant’s wastewater. Hundreds of thousands of residents had been subjected through drinking water.
The most impacted were Miteni’s employees. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who was employed for years in its specialty chemicals division, displayed one of the highest concentrations of Pfas ever recorded in human blood. “When the story came to light, I reviewed a catalog of health issues related to PFAS, and found out I had them all,” states Ermetti.
Elevated concentrations of PFAS in the blood are linked to higher chances of cancer, heart conditions, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders and more. Ermetti is currently recovering from a recent medical procedure.
Michela Piccoli, 51, a healthcare worker and campaigner with Mothers Against PFAS, began mobilizing after discovering her children’s blood indicated elevated amounts of forever chemicals. When she found out that Miteni’s proprietary information and machinery were being transferred to India, she was stunned.
“Being parents, as women, our anxiety has increased,” she said. “Because our children are everyone’s children.”
After Miteni went bankrupt, its assets were acquired in 2019 by Viva Lifesciences, a branch of the Indian chemical company Laxmi Organic Industries – the sole participant 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 new acquisition to investors. Records of investor gatherings indicate that Laxmi’s management downplayed ecological worries, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, declaring that Miteni was “doing everything legally in compliance with EU regulations”.
Goenka is a member on the directorate of Laxmi Organic Italy, a entity founded in 2021. Also included is Antonio Nardone, the last chief executive of Miteni, who was found guilty of environmental pollution and false accounting at the recent court case and given six years and four months in jail. According to a former mid-level manager requesting confidentiality, Nardone was traveling for work to India prior to the firm’s collapse.
While Laxmi purchased Miteni’s assets in June 2019, the environmental assessment report for the building of the plant in Lote shows that in March 2018 the company was already planning to commence manufacturing fluorinated compounds matching Miteni’s offerings. Laxmi Organic Industries declined to answer inquiries.
By 2021, Laxmi’s plan clearly outlined the objective to “acquire the customer base of Miteni” and emerge as a top player in the manufacturing of Pfas and specialty chemicals. Logistics data indicate that, to get approval on the standard of the chemicals, in 2024 Laxmi began distributing test batches to companies with past business relationships with Miteni, such as BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.
From the beginning of 2025, Laxmi’s site in Lote Parshuram has been completely active, manufacturing substances that will be used in agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, colorants, cosmetics and additional goods.
Investigations demonstrate that levels of forever chemicals in the ecosystem are alarmingly high, particularly around production sites. But even though international attention is increasing, in India the matter is not yet a policy priority.
“If we look at the regulations, [Pfas] is not present in those standards. It’s unacknowledged by the national authorities as of today,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an environmental chemist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Autonomous study teams across India have performed research in various regions. But these studies are restricted in range, and there are still only a handful.”
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 fishing populations in this area totally deteriorated,” she said.
The chemical district is served by a centralised wastewater treatment plant that has been frequently criticized.
“Nearby communities have consistently reported that it’s not working properly,” said Dandekar. “During power outages, a common occurrence in the countryside, the plant cannot function and factories release polluted water directly into the streams.” Environmental authorities have issued multiple notices to the site in the past few years.
In the EU, the regulatory agency is examining a proposal to prohibit the manufacture, importation and use of more than 10,000 forever chemicals. This attention may be pushing the sector to the developing nations, according to Claudia Marcolungo, a legal scholar at the University of Padua. “I think that this matter should be examined, because the reality that Miteni’s operations, intellectual assets and equipment have been transferred to a nation like India should lead us to reflect, minimally, on the power that these multinationals have to move in countries where there is evidently a race to the bottom in terms of environmental protection.”
Miteni has closed down, but the company’s toxic legacy lives on – at the polluted location in Vicenza, and in Lote. The medical effects associated with PFAS manufacturing are expected to impact communities that are already struggling with an hazardous setting for generations.
“That region has experienced sufficient environmental destruction by now,” says Dandekar. “Should additional hazardous firms establish presence, it’s always a risk.”
A geospatial analyst with over a decade of experience in terrain modeling and environmental data visualization.
