After 37 years of service, the Director General of the International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF), Dr. Herwig Strolz, will retire at the end of 2006 and will be succeeded by Dr. Christian Schindler who was appointed his successor at the Federation’s annual conference in Dubai, UEA, at the end of September. Dr. Schindler, a native of Germany, earned his doctorate from the University of Cologne, Germany, where he studied at the Institute for Economic Policy. He joined ITMF in 2004 as the Federation’s economist.

Born in Bregenz, Austria, in 1937, Dr. Strolz studied law and political science at the University of Vienna. Dr. Strolz graduated in 1961 from the University of Vienna as a doctor in law. The following year, he joined the foreign trade department of the Austrian Federal Chamber of Commerce; and in 1963 was named Austrian Trade Commissioner in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1968, he moved on to the Austrian Foreign Trade Office in Montreal. That same year, he was named director of the Austrian Federation of Industries and also managed the textile and clothing department of the Chamber of Commerce of Vorarlberg, Austria.

His career at ITMF began in 1970, when he became director of the Switzerland-based International Federation of Cotton and Allied Textile Industries, which changed its name to International Textile Manufacturers Federation in 1978. Under his leadership, the federation has become the foremost global trade association for the basic textile industry, currently counting among its membership textile trade associations and other entities from nearly 50 textile-producing countries.

In recognition of his leadership in the global textile industry, Strolz received the Schlafhorst Foundation’s Golden Jenny Award in 1991 and was named Textile World’s Leader of the Year in 2001.