To Which Location Does a European Manufacturing Facility That Contaminated Drinking Water Move On? Heading to India

The dense green jungle and reddish-brown hills of Lote, located on India’s western shoreline, lead to a small hill where a factory looms under the open sky.

The factory is almost brand new, but its equipment is far from new: it comes from the former Miteni plant in Vicenza, Italy. Miteni closed down in 2018 after one of the worst ecological controversies in the country’s recent history: after years of manufacturing persistent PFAS compounds, the firm’s leadership was prosecuted for contaminating water sources in an region home to 350,000 residents. In June, its former executives were found guilty at the local tribunal of causing environmental pollution and additional offenses and given prison sentences, 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 processes – everything needed to manufacture forever chemicals – is now located at Lote Parshuram MIDC, a vast industrial enclave thousands of miles distant, sandwiched among local communities and groves of trees. And the factory has just started to resume PFAS production.

An Environmental Burden

Previously recognized for its expertise in creating methods for advanced chemicals, Miteni is now infamous for the toxic legacy it left behind. In 2011, scientists found exceptionally elevated levels of PFAS compounds in the facility’s effluent. Numerous of residents had been subjected through potable water.

The worst-affected were Miteni’s own workers. Ilario Ermetti, 69, who worked for decades in its specialty chemicals division, displayed among the top levels of PFAS ever recorded in human blood. “When the story came to light, I reviewed a list of medical conditions associated with Pfas, and found out I had them all,” states Ermetti.

High levels of Pfas in the bloodstream are linked to increased risk of malignancies, heart conditions, liver and kidney damage, reproductive disorders and additional ailments. Ermetti is currently recovering from a recent medical procedure.

Community Concerns

Michela Piccoli, 51, a nurse and campaigner with Mamme No Pfas, started organizing after discovering her offspring’s blood tests indicated elevated amounts of persistent pollutants. When she found out that Miteni’s patents and machinery were being sent to India, she was stunned.

“Being parents, as females, our concern has grown,” she said. “Since our kids are everyone’s children.”

Corporate Transition

Following Miteni’s insolvency, its assets were acquired in 2019 by a pharmaceutical firm, a branch of the domestic chemical corporation Laxmi Organic Industries – the sole participant in the public auction. By the start of 2023, the complete machinery was travelling on freight ships en route to Mumbai. Meanwhile, Laxmi was promoting its new acquisition to investors. Transcripts of shareholders’ meetings indicate that Laxmi’s management downplayed environmental concerns, with its president, Harshvardhan Goenka, stating that Miteni was “doing everything legally according to EU regulations”.

Goenka is one of the three men on the board of Laxmi Organic the Italian branch, a entity founded in 2021. Also included is Antonio Nardone, the last chief executive 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. According to a ex-supervisor requesting confidentiality, Nardone was traveling for work to India months before the company went bankrupt.

Although Laxmi bought Miteni’s assets in June 2019, the environmental assessment report for the construction of the plant in Lote reveals that in March 2018 the firm was already planning to start producing fluorochemicals matching Miteni’s product list. Laxmi Organic Industries did not respond to inquiries.

Growth Plans

By 2021, Laxmi’s plan explicitly spelled out the goal to “capture [the] market share of Miteni” and emerge as a top player in the production of Pfas and specialty chemicals. Shipping records indicate that, to get approval on the standard of the chemicals, in 2024 Laxmi started sending out samples to companies with past business relationships 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, colorants, cosmetics and additional goods.

Environmental Oversight

Studies demonstrate that levels of persistent pollutants in the ecosystem are alarmingly high, especially near production sites. But although international attention is increasing, in India the issue is not yet a policy priority.

“If we look at the regulations, [Pfas] is absent in those standards. It’s unacknowledged by the Indian government as of today,” said Rajneesh Gautam, an ecological scientist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Independent research groups across India have performed research in different states. But this work are restricted in range, and there are still very few of them.”

Local Impact

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 established in 1986, “the income source of fisher folk communities 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 not working properly,” said Dandekar. “When there is no electricity, a frequent event in rural Maharashtra state, the plant fails to operate and industries discharge polluted water straight into the streams.” Regulatory bodies have issued several warning letters to the plant in the past few years.

Global Implications

In the EU, the regulatory agency is reviewing a plan to prohibit the production, importation and utilization of over ten thousand persistent compounds. This attention may be pushing 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 fact that Miteni’s operations, intellectual assets and machinery have been relocated to a nation like India should lead us to reflect, minimally, on the influence that these global corporations have to move in countries where there is evidently a race to the bottom in terms of ecological safeguards.”

Ongoing Risks

Miteni has shut down, but the firm’s harmful impact continues – at the contaminated site in Vicenza, and in Lote. The health impacts associated with Pfas production are expected to impact communities that are facing an hazardous setting for generations.

“That region has seen enough environmental destruction already,” says Dandekar. “If more dangerous companies establish presence, it’s always a risk.”