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.
Born in Bregenz, Austria, in 1937, Dr. Strolz studied law and political science at the University of Vienna from where he graduated in 1961 as a doctor in law.
In 1962 he joined the foreign trade department of the Austrian Federal Chamber of Commerce and was appointed Austrian Trade Commissioner in Caracas, Venezuela, the following year. He was transferred to the Austrian Foreign Trade Office in Montreal, Canada, in 1968.
In 1968 he was appointed Director of the Austrian Federation of Industries and assumed at the same time managerial responsibilities for the textile and clothing department of the Chamber of Commerce of Vorarlberg, the province where most of Austria's textile manufacturing activity is located.
Dr. Strolz became Director of the International Federation of Cotton and Allied Textile Industries (IFCATI) on January 1, 1970, by appointment of the Federation's Committee of Management at its meeting in Oporto, Portugal, in October 1969. The Federation changed its name to International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF) in 1978.
During his term of office ITMF has become the leading global trade association of the primary textile industry with close to 50 of the world's leading textile producing countries in membership.
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