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The lush tropical forest and reddish-brown elevations of Lote, situated along India’s west coast, lead to a modest rise where a factory looms against the sky.

This industrial unit is almost brand new, but its equipment is not: it comes from the former Miteni plant in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni ceased operations in 2018 following among the most severe ecological controversies in the country’s recent history: after years of manufacturing Pfas forever chemicals, the company’s management was prosecuted for polluting water resources in an region home to 350,000 people. In June, previous company leaders were convicted at the local tribunal of causing environmental pollution and additional offenses and sentenced to jail, which they are expected to appeal against.

What are PFAS, how toxic are they and how do you become exposed?

And yet, the entire operational setup, its patents and methods – everything needed to manufacture Pfas – is now here in Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave almost 4,000 miles away, sandwiched among villages and groves of trees. And the plant has recently begun to resume PFAS production.

A Toxic Legacy

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 levels 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 documented in human blood. “After the facts emerged, I reviewed a catalog of health issues related to Pfas, and discovered I had them all,” says Ermetti.

High levels of PFAS in the blood are linked to increased risk of malignancies, cardiovascular diseases, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders and more. Ermetti is currently recovering from a recent surgical operation.

Community Concerns

Michela Piccoli, 51, a healthcare worker and activist with Mothers Against PFAS, began mobilizing after discovering her children’s blood showed elevated amounts of persistent pollutants. When she found out that Miteni’s proprietary information and equipment were being transferred to India, she was stunned.

“As mothers, as females, our anxiety has increased,” 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 sole participant in the open sale. By the start of 2023, all the equipment was being shipped heading to Mumbai. Meanwhile, Laxmi was boasting of its new acquisition to investors. Transcripts of shareholders’ meetings indicate that Laxmi’s executives minimized ecological worries, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, declaring that Miteni was “doing everything legally in compliance with European standards”.

Goenka is one of the three men on the board of Laxmi Organic the Italian branch, a entity established in 2021. Another is Antonio Nardone, the final CEO of Miteni, who was convicted of ecological offenses and false accounting at the June trial and sentenced to six years and four months in jail. Per a former mid-level manager speaking on condition of anonymity, Nardone was taking business trips to India months before the firm’s collapse.

Although Laxmi bought Miteni’s assets in June 2019, the environmental assessment report for the building of the factory in Lote reveals that in March 2018 the company was already intending to start producing fluorinated compounds compatible with Miteni’s offerings. Laxmi Organic Industries did not respond to inquiries.

Growth Plans

By 2021, Laxmi’s strategy explicitly spelled out the goal to “capture [the] market share of Miteni” and become a leader in the manufacturing of PFAS and specialty chemicals. Logistics data indicate that, to secure validation on the quality of the chemicals, in 2024 Laxmi began distributing samples to companies with past business relationships with Miteni, such as BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.

From the beginning of 2025, Laxmi’s location in Lote Parshuram has been fully operational, producing chemicals that will be used in agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, colorants, cosmetics and additional goods.

Environmental Oversight

Studies demonstrate that concentrations of persistent pollutants in the ecosystem are worryingly elevated, particularly around manufacturing facilities. But even though international attention 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 national authorities currently,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an ecological scientist at the academic institution. “Independent research groups across India have performed research in various regions. But these studies 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 dismal environmental track record”. After it was established in 1986, “the livelihood of fishing populations in this area completely collapsed,” she said.

The chemical district is served by a centralised wastewater treatment plant that has been frequently criticized.

“The local villages have always stated that it’s malfunctioning,” said Dandekar. “During power outages, a frequent event in the countryside, the plant cannot function and industries release contaminated effluent directly into the streams.” Regulatory bodies have issued multiple notices to the site in the past few years.

International Ramifications

In the EU, the European Chemical Agency is reviewing a plan to ban the production, import and use of over ten thousand persistent compounds. This attention may be pushing the sector to the global south, per Claudia Marcolungo, a legal scholar at the academic institution. “I think that this issue should be investigated, because the reality that Miteni’s operations, intellectual assets and equipment have been relocated to a country like India should prompt consideration, minimally, on the influence that these global corporations have to move in countries where there is clearly a lowering of standards in terms of ecological safeguards.”

Ongoing Risks

Miteni has closed down, but the company’s toxic legacy continues – at the contaminated site in Vicenza, and in Lote. The medical effects associated with Pfas production are likely to affect communities that are facing an unsafe environment for generations.

“That region has experienced sufficient ecological damage already,” says Dandekar. “Should additional hazardous firms establish presence, it’s always a risk.”