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The lush tropical forest and rust-red hills of Lote, situated along India’s west coast, give way to a small hill where a factory looms against the sky.

This industrial unit is almost brand new, but its machinery is far from new: it comes from the former Miteni plant in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni ceased operations in 2018 after among the most severe environmental scandals in the nation’s modern record: after years of manufacturing persistent PFAS compounds, the company’s management was prosecuted for contaminating water resources in an area inhabited by 350,000 residents. In June, its former executives were convicted at the Vicenza court of environmental damage and additional offenses and sentenced to jail, with appeals anticipated.

Understanding PFAS: Toxicity Levels and Exposure Routes

And yet, all of the company’s equipment, its intellectual property and methods – everything needed to manufacture forever chemicals – is now here in Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave almost 4,000 miles away, wedged between villages and wooded areas. And the factory has just started to resume PFAS production.

A Toxic Legacy

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

The most impacted were Miteni’s own workers. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who worked for decades in its specialty chemicals division, displayed among the top levels of PFAS documented in human blood. “When the story came to light, I looked at a list of medical conditions related to PFAS, and found out I had them all,” says Ermetti.

Elevated concentrations of Pfas in the blood are associated with increased risk of malignancies, cardiovascular diseases, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders and additional ailments. Ermetti is currently recovering from a recent medical procedure.

Community Concerns

Michela Piccoli, 51, a healthcare worker and campaigner with Mothers Against PFAS, began mobilizing after discovering her offspring’s blood tests showed elevated amounts of forever chemicals. When she found out 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 acquired in 2019 by Viva Lifesciences, a branch of the domestic chemical corporation Laxmi Organic Industries – the only bidder in the open sale. By early 2023, the complete machinery was being shipped en route to Mumbai. Meanwhile, Laxmi was promoting its recent purchase to shareholders. Transcripts of shareholders’ meetings indicate that Laxmi’s management minimized environmental concerns, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, stating that Miteni was “operating lawfully according to European standards”.

Goenka is a member on the board of Laxmi Organic the Italian branch, a company founded in 2021. Also included is Antonio Nardone, the last chief executive of Miteni, who was convicted of environmental pollution and financial misreporting at the recent court case and sentenced to six years and four months in jail. Per a former mid-level manager requesting confidentiality, Nardone was taking business trips to India months before the company went bankrupt.

Although Laxmi purchased Miteni’s assets in June 2019, the ecological review for the building of the plant in Lote shows that in March 2018 the company was already planning to start producing fluorinated compounds compatible with Miteni’s offerings. Laxmi Organic Industries declined to answer requests for comment.

Strategic Expansion

By 2021, Laxmi’s plan explicitly spelled out the objective to “acquire the customer base of Miteni” and become a leader in the production of Pfas and specialty chemicals. Logistics data show that, to secure validation on the quality of the chemicals, in 2024 Laxmi started sending out test batches to firms with previous commercial ties with Miteni, including BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.

Since early 2025, Laxmi’s site in Lote Parshuram has been fully operational, producing chemicals that will be utilized for agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, colorants, cosmetics and other products.

Environmental Oversight

Investigations demonstrate that levels of forever chemicals in the environment are alarmingly high, particularly around manufacturing facilities. But even though global focus is increasing, in India the issue is not yet a policy priority.

“Examining the rules, [Pfas] is absent in those standards. It’s unacknowledged by the Indian government currently,” 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 restricted in range, and there are still very few of them.”

Regional Consequences

Parineeta Dandekar, coordinator 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 livelihood of fisher folk communities in this region completely collapsed,” she said.

The chemical district is served by 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 frequent event in rural Maharashtra state, the facility fails to operate and industries release contaminated effluent directly into the streams.” Environmental authorities have issued several warning letters to the site in the past few years.

International Ramifications

In the EU, the regulatory agency is reviewing a plan to prohibit the manufacture, import and utilization of more than 10,000 persistent compounds. This scrutiny may be pushing the sector to the global south, according to Claudia Marcolungo, a legal scholar at the academic institution. “I believe that this issue should be investigated, because the reality 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 influence that these global corporations have to move in nations where there is evidently a race to the bottom in terms of environmental protection.”

Ongoing Risks

Miteni has shut down, but the firm’s harmful impact lives on – at the contaminated site in Vicenza, and in Lote. The health impacts associated with PFAS manufacturing are expected to impact communities that are facing an hazardous setting for years to come.

“The area has seen enough ecological damage by now,” says Dandekar. “If more dangerous companies move in, it’s always a risk.”