The dense green jungle and rust-red elevations of Lote, located on India’s west coast, give way to a modest rise where a factory looms against the sky.
This industrial unit is largely newly built, but its equipment is far from new: it originates from the defunct Miteni plant in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni ceased operations in 2018 following among the most severe environmental scandals in the country’s recent history: after decades of producing Pfas forever chemicals, the company’s management was prosecuted for polluting water sources in an region home to 350,000 people. In June, previous company leaders were found guilty at the Vicenza court of environmental damage and other charges and given prison sentences, with appeals anticipated.
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And yet, the entire operational setup, its patents and processes – all required components to produce forever chemicals – is now here in Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave thousands of miles distant, sandwiched among villages and groves of trees. And the factory has just started to produce forever chemicals again.
Previously recognized for its specialism in creating methods for specialty compounds, Miteni is now infamous for the harmful aftermath it bequeathed. In 2011, researchers found exceptionally elevated concentrations of PFAS compounds in the plant’s wastewater. Hundreds of thousands of residents had been subjected through potable water.
The worst-affected were Miteni’s employees. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who was employed for years in its specialty chemicals division, showed one of the highest concentrations of Pfas documented in human blood. “When the story came to light, I looked at a catalog of health issues associated with Pfas, and found out I had them all,” says Ermetti.
High levels of PFAS in the bloodstream are linked to higher chances of malignancies, heart conditions, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders and more. Ermetti is presently recuperating from a recent medical procedure.
Michela Piccoli, 51, a healthcare worker and campaigner with Mothers Against PFAS, started organizing after learning her children’s blood showed high levels of persistent pollutants. When she found out that Miteni’s proprietary information and equipment were being transferred to India, she was stunned.
“Being parents, as women, our concern has grown,” she said. “Because our children are everyone’s children.”
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 travelling on freight ships heading to Mumbai. Meanwhile, Laxmi was boasting of its recent purchase to shareholders. Transcripts of investor gatherings show that Laxmi’s executives minimized environmental concerns, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, stating that Miteni was “doing everything legally according to EU regulations”.
Goenka is one of the three men on the directorate of Laxmi Organic the Italian branch, a entity founded in 2021. Another is Antonio Nardone, the last chief executive of Miteni, who was convicted of ecological offenses and false accounting at the recent court case and sentenced to six years and four months in jail. Per a ex-supervisor requesting confidentiality, Nardone was traveling for work to India prior to the firm’s collapse.
Although Laxmi purchased 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 planning to commence manufacturing fluorinated compounds compatible with Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries did not respond to inquiries.
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 fluorochemicals. Logistics data indicate that, to secure validation on the quality of the chemicals, in 2024 Laxmi began distributing samples to companies with previous commercial ties with Miteni, such as BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.
Since early 2025, Laxmi’s location in Lote Parshuram has been fully operational, manufacturing substances that will be used in agrochemicals, medicines, dyes, beauty products and additional goods.
Investigations have shown that concentrations of forever chemicals in the ecosystem are alarmingly high, particularly around manufacturing facilities. But although international attention is growing, in India the issue is not yet a policy priority.
“If we look at the regulations, [Pfas] is not present in such guidelines. It’s not recognised by the national authorities currently,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an environmental chemist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Autonomous study teams across India have conducted studies in various regions. But these studies are limited in scope, and there are still only a handful.”
Parineeta Dandekar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, and People, says the Lote Parshuram industrial district “has a poor ecological history”. After it was set up in 1986, “the income source of fishing populations in this area completely collapsed,” she said.
The chemical district is dependent on a centralised wastewater treatment plant that has been frequently criticized.
“The local villages have always stated that it’s malfunctioning,” said Dandekar. “When there is no electricity, a frequent event in the countryside, the facility cannot function and factories release polluted water straight into the waterways.” Regulatory bodies have sent multiple notices to the plant in the past few years.
In the EU, the regulatory agency is reviewing a plan to ban the production, import and utilization of over ten thousand forever chemicals. This scrutiny may be driving the industry to the developing nations, per Claudia Marcolungo, a legal scholar at the academic institution. “I believe that this issue should be examined, because the reality that Miteni’s production, patents and equipment have been relocated to a nation like India should prompt consideration, at the very least, on the influence that these global corporations have to move in nations where there is evidently a lowering of standards in terms of ecological safeguards.”
Miteni has shut down, but the firm’s harmful impact lives on – at the polluted location in Vicenza, and in Lote. The health impacts associated with Pfas production are likely to affect communities that are facing an hazardous setting for generations.
“The area has seen enough environmental destruction by now,” says Dandekar. “If more dangerous companies move in, it’s perpetually concerning.”
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