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The lush green jungle and reddish-brown hills of Lote, situated along India’s west coast, give way to a modest rise where a factory looms against the sky.

The factory is almost brand new, but its equipment is not: it originates from the defunct Miteni factory in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni ceased operations in 2018 after one of the worst environmental scandals in the nation’s modern record: after years of manufacturing persistent PFAS compounds, the company’s management was prosecuted for polluting water sources in an area inhabited by 350,000 people. In June, previous company leaders were convicted at the local tribunal of environmental damage 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, all of the company’s equipment, its patents and processes – everything needed to manufacture forever chemicals – 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 factory has just started to produce forever chemicals again.

An Environmental Burden

Once known for its specialism in developing processes for advanced chemicals, Miteni is now infamous for the harmful aftermath it left behind. In 2011, researchers found extraordinarily high concentrations of Pfas 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 worked for decades in its fluorinated chemical department, 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 cancer, cardiovascular diseases, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders and additional ailments. Ermetti is presently recuperating from a recent medical procedure.

Public Apprehensions

Michela Piccoli, 51, a healthcare worker and campaigner with Mamme No Pfas, began mobilizing after discovering her children’s blood showed elevated amounts of forever chemicals. When she learned that Miteni’s patents and equipment were being sent to India, she was shocked.

“Being parents, as females, our concern has grown,” she said. “Since our kids are the children of all.”

Corporate Transition

After Miteni went bankrupt, 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 public auction. By the start of 2023, the complete machinery was being shipped heading to Mumbai. At the same time, Laxmi was promoting its recent purchase to shareholders. Records of shareholders’ meetings indicate that Laxmi’s executives downplayed environmental concerns, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, declaring that Miteni was “doing everything legally according to European standards”.

Goenka is a member on the board of Laxmi Organic the Italian branch, a entity established in 2021. Also included is Antonio Nardone, the final CEO of Miteni, who was found guilty of ecological offenses and false accounting at the recent court case and given six years and four months in jail. According to a former mid-level manager speaking on condition of anonymity, 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 firm was already intending to start producing fluorochemicals matching Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries declined to answer inquiries.

Growth Plans

By 2021, Laxmi’s strategy explicitly spelled out the objective to “acquire the customer base of Miteni” and become a leader in the manufacturing of PFAS and fluorochemicals. Shipping records indicate that, to get approval on the quality of the compounds, in 2024 Laxmi began distributing test batches to firms with previous commercial ties with Miteni, including BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC.

Since early 2025, Laxmi’s location in Lote Parshuram has been completely active, producing chemicals that will be used in pesticides, medicines, colorants, cosmetics and additional goods.

Environmental Oversight

Investigations demonstrate that levels of persistent pollutants in the ecosystem are alarmingly high, especially near production sites. But even though international attention is growing, 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 currently,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an ecological scientist at the academic institution. “Autonomous study teams across India have performed research in different states. But these studies 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 set up in 1986, “the income source of fisher folk communities in this region completely collapsed,” she said.

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

“Nearby communities have consistently reported that it’s malfunctioning,” said Dandekar. “During power outages, a common occurrence in the countryside, the facility fails to operate and factories discharge polluted water straight into the streams.” Regulatory bodies have issued multiple notices to the plant in the past few years.

Global Implications

In the EU, the European Chemical Agency is reviewing a plan to ban the production, import and utilization of more than 10,000 persistent compounds. This scrutiny may be driving the industry to the developing nations, per Claudia Marcolungo, a professor of environmental law at the University of Padua. “I think that this matter should be examined, because the fact that Miteni’s production, patents and machinery have been relocated to a country like India should lead us to reflect, minimally, on the power that these multinationals have to move in nations where there is evidently a race to the bottom in terms of environmental protection.”

Persistent Threats

Miteni has shut down, but the firm’s harmful impact continues – at the polluted location in Vicenza, and in Lote. The medical effects linked to Pfas production are likely to affect communities that are already struggling with an unsafe environment for generations.

“The area has experienced sufficient environmental destruction by now,” says Dandekar. “Should additional hazardous firms move in, it’s perpetually concerning.”