Under the leadership of Dr Candar the IUR prepared documentation on past research for the 2007 ILF meeting in Paris and have listed the global centres active in research for the leather industry worldwide on the web (www.iultcs.org). Earlier this year Candar was appointed vice president elect of the IULTCS and requested a replacement be found to lead the IUR so that he could focus on his new responsibilities.

The new chair, Dr Tegtmeyer, has a PhD in chemistry and has built his career at leather chemical makers LANXESS. Tegtmeyer has held a number of increasingly important positions in process development, research and marketing and is currently vice president for application and product development for LANXESS leather. He is well known and respected in the global leather industry. Dr Tegtmeyer has shown much interest in the work of the IULTCS and looks forward to developing the role of the IUR which he feels is uniquely structured to make an important contribution to help focus global research on the needs of the leather industry.