Sustainable production of eco-friendly silk screen printed towels The applicant, Araco International B.V., is a Dutch company with 25 employees. It was established in 2007 and is focussed on trading and producing of promotional presents. Their clients are resellers of promotion articles. One of their main products are towels, they developed their own line: Sophie Muval.The project partner, Instacon SRL, has 23 employees and was established in 2002. Instacon SRL is a producer of textile for hospital clothes. The shareholders of Instacon SRL are also the main shareholders of Condreance. Condreance is the executing company of the production of the garments.The partners are setting up a joint venture production facility for producing towels for the business of promotion articles in Bulgaria, the EU, the Netherlands and Romania. These will be coloured towels, printed screen towels and double faced towels. The production facility will be of flexible scale, which means that it is suitable for making smaller orders, on demand. This is the first production facility of towels on an industrial scale for Moldova. The facility will do the weaving, dying and print screening of towels with high-tech production machines and in the environmental friendly way with the dying and print screening.Update on the project: New local partner is Lis Tex.Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)The partners do describe that CSR will be one of the key issues within the factory. This is very important for Araco International B.V. because it wants to cooperate now and in the future with well-known multinationals, R&D institutes, universities and governmental organisations. Araco International B.V. sees a trend that in the purchasing of give-away articles CSR is getting more and more important for clients.The joint venture will become member of BSCI and the joint venture will acquire the BSCI certification. Furthermore, the joint venture will acquire the OEKO-Tex label for eco-friendly towels. This label focussed on four main topics: the production ecology, the human ecology, performance ecology and disposal ecology.The joint venture will also acquire the ISO 9001 certification. And the partners describe specifically that corruption, child and forced labour are not tolerated. The non-discrimination policy will be respected.Impact•	Employment and working conditionsThe company will pay living wages. By the OEKO-Tex certification and BSCI it is also guaranteed that the employees will work in a healthy working area.They will guarantee access to a kindergarten next to their production facility. The factory will have its own canteen where the employees get free of charge fruit. The employees will get a good training programme for performing the job. The training programme is not extensive and for example good English lessons are lacking although this would be helpful for Moldova. The employees will get a few towels per year for free.The employees can use facilities of a fitness club with discount (the rest will be paid by joint venture).•	Innovation / Transfer of knowledgeCurrently, there are no companies making towels in Moldova. Since fashion is one of the biggest export products of Moldova we did check this specifically at the Embassy. The Embassy mentioned one company making towels, named Flautex. The local partner mentioned to know this company and that this company stopped making towels and has started a procedure for liquidation of the company. Furthermore, the towels were made on old equipment and did not incorporate making towels according to BSCI and OEKO-Tex label. The goal of BSCI is to improve the working conditions in the global supply chain worldwide. The objective of STeP certification is the permanent implementation of environmentally friendly production processes, optimum health and safety and socially acceptable working conditions.The partner delivered an additional letter of the ministry in which is stated that Moldova is not producing towels at all. The technology of print screen technology for towels is also new for Moldova. This technology with towels is difficult because the ink has to go totally into the fibres.•	Chain effectsImpact on local suppliersThe joint venture is aiming to select a local cotton spinning mill. The joint venture prefers to work with Tirotex, which is a large Moldovan textile company. Besides the cotton yarn suppliers a supplier of polyester tarn and water based paint will be searched for. This could be local suppliers but also suppliers from surrounding countries.Impact on local customers or consumersLocal consumers can buy towels from the joint venture, probably through Listex. This means thee better quality towels produced in own country. Furthermore, there will be a joint venture shop where the second choice will be sold.•	Impact on the sectorThey will open the factory for other textile companies and present the certification aspects.The joint venture will work together with the faculty of light industry (textile department) of the Technical Academy of Chisinau. The joint venture will help to create a curriculum which is more up to date with the modern textile techniques. The first training for the factory workers will start simultaneously with the training for the staff from the light industry faculty (train the trainers programme). In this way the training from abroad will also become affordable for reasonable prices for other local textile companies. Also, employees of the joint venture will give guest lectures in the light industry. This has to become part of the results.•	EnvironmentThe factory will use energy. But they will set up the production facility according to environmental production certificates. The ecological part is the production process in which the partners are using environmentally friendly paint and ink.Furthermore, Araco International B.V. also wants to set up a line of biological cotton for their promotional towels. At the moment, the demand is not big enough for setting up investments for this, but when the production plant is running Araco International B.V. hopes to make this component also part of its collection.•	Position of womenPositive impact. Half of jobs are for women, There are twenty jobs. Set up a production facility for the production of 90,000 kg of coloured towels, 60,000 kg of double faced towels and 50,000 kg of silk screen printed towels, for export to Araco International BV for selling on the EU market (60% to 70%), sales through th