🔗 Share this article Where Does a Western Manufacturing Facility That Contaminated Drinking Water Move On? To India The dense green jungle and rust-red hills of Lote, situated along India’s west coast, lead to a small hill where a factory looms under the open sky. The factory is almost brand new, but its machinery is far from new: it originates from the former Miteni factory in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni ceased operations in 2018 after among the most severe ecological controversies in the nation’s modern record: after years of manufacturing Pfas forever chemicals, the company’s management was brought to trial for polluting water sources in an region inhabited by 350,000 people. In June, previous company leaders were convicted at the local tribunal of causing environmental pollution and other charges and given prison sentences, with appeals anticipated. 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 forever chemicals – is now located at Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave thousands of miles distant, wedged between local communities and wooded areas. And the plant has recently begun to resume PFAS production. A Toxic Legacy Previously recognized for its specialism in developing processes for specialty compounds, Miteni is now infamous for the toxic legacy it left behind. In 2011, scientists found extraordinarily high concentrations of Pfas in the plant’s wastewater. Numerous of residents had been exposed through drinking water. The worst-affected were Miteni’s employees. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who worked for decades in its fluorinated chemical department, showed one of the highest concentrations of PFAS ever recorded in human blood. “After the facts emerged, I reviewed a list of medical conditions related to PFAS, and discovered I had them all,” says Ermetti. Ex-employee Ilario Ermetti showed a high concentration of PFAS in his blood. High levels of PFAS in the blood are associated with increased risk of cancer, heart conditions, liver and kidney damage, fertility issues and more. Ermetti is currently recovering from a recent medical procedure. Community Concerns Michela Piccoli, 51, a healthcare worker and campaigner with Mamme No Pfas, began mobilizing after discovering her offspring’s blood tests showed elevated amounts of persistent pollutants. When she found out that Miteni’s patents and equipment were being transferred to India, she was stunned. “Being parents, as females, our anxiety has increased,” she said. “Since our kids are everyone’s children.” Business Shift After Miteni went bankrupt, its holdings were bought in 2019 by Viva Lifesciences, a branch of the Indian chemical company Laxmi Organic Industries – the sole participant in the open sale. By the start of 2023, the complete machinery was travelling on freight ships heading to Mumbai. Meanwhile, Laxmi was boasting of its new acquisition to shareholders. Transcripts of shareholders’ meetings show that Laxmi’s management downplayed ecological worries, with its chairman, Harshvardhan Goenka, declaring that Miteni was “operating lawfully according to EU regulations”. Goenka is one of the three men 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 convicted of ecological offenses and financial misreporting at the June trial and given six years and four months in jail. According to a ex-supervisor requesting confidentiality, Nardone was traveling for work to India months before the firm’s collapse. While Laxmi bought Miteni’s assets in June 2019, the ecological review for the construction of the factory in Lote shows that in March 2018 the company was already intending to start producing fluorinated compounds matching Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries did not respond to inquiries. Growth Plans By 2021, Laxmi’s strategy explicitly spelled out the goal 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 secure validation on the quality of the compounds, in 2024 Laxmi started sending out test batches to companies with previous commercial ties with Miteni, including BASF, Chemours, DuPont and FMC. From the beginning of 2025, Laxmi’s location in Lote Parshuram has been completely active, producing chemicals that will be utilized for pesticides, pharmaceuticals, dyes, cosmetics and additional goods. Regulatory Context Investigations have shown that concentrations of forever chemicals in the ecosystem are worryingly elevated, particularly around manufacturing facilities. But even though international attention is growing, in India the issue is not yet a policy priority. “If we look at the regulations, [Pfas] is absent in such guidelines. It’s unacknowledged by the Indian government as of today,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an environmental chemist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Independent research groups across India have performed research in different states. But these studies are restricted in range, and there are still very few of them.” Local Impact Parineeta Dandekar, coordinator of the regional environmental group, says the Lote Parshuram manufacturing zone “has a poor ecological history”. 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 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 common occurrence in rural Maharashtra state, the facility cannot function and factories discharge polluted water directly into the waterways.” Regulatory bodies have issued multiple notices to the plant in recent years. International Ramifications In the EU, the European Chemical Agency is examining a plan to prohibit the production, importation and use of more than 10,000 forever chemicals. This scrutiny may be driving the sector to the global south, per Claudia Marcolungo, a professor of environmental law at the academic institution. “I think that this matter should be investigated, because the reality that Miteni’s production, intellectual assets and machinery 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 clearly a lowering of standards 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 health impacts associated with PFAS manufacturing are likely to affect populations that are already struggling with an hazardous setting for generations. “The area has seen enough environmental destruction already,” says Dandekar. “If more dangerous companies establish presence, it’s always a risk.”