The Chemical Shippers Association wants you!

That is, if you are a small or medium-sized maritime chemical shipper looking to combine volumes with other shippers for improved pricing. The CSA was created in October as a transportation-specific offshoot of the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association (socma) and announced a recruitment campaign in March.

Lynne Jones, executive director of the CSA, says a socma member looking to leverage the strengths of socma shippers in gaining improved volumes and pricing hatched the idea. In the early stages, socma officials worked closely with Agility Logistics to determine what role the association should play in the shipper carrier relationship. Agility is now the exclusive service provider for CSA membership.

Jones says heavy emphasis was placed on confidentiality when setting up procedures for the association. Interested shippers are sent an inquiry package to determine what materials and volumes they typically ship. After that, CSA will ask what rates the shipper is seeking and CSA will either accept or deny the price. In doing this, the actual rates of the association are not revealed, but nor are shippers' current rates.

"Once the shipper is satisfied with our response, we ask them to sign a confidentiality agreement, so we can divulge our rate and they can't share it outside the association and the provider," says Jones. Members still deal with carriers and forwarders directly and manage document preparation but they do so with a CSA membership number on the bill of lading.

There is a registration fee of $60 for socma members and $120 for nonmembers. The CSA is targeting shippers with 4,000-6,000 aggregate twenty-foot equivalent units annually, which is the standard unit of measure in maritime shipping.

"Larger shippers are welcome into the membership, but it may not benefit them depending on where they stand," says Jones. "Larger shippers tend to negotiate effectively on their own and tend to have better service from carriers. We are focused on ocean, but our charter allows us to do anything related to the transportation industry. We want to crawl before we walk."