Trade associations – Industry champion or Gentlemens “club”?

Trade Associations: Companies are either a member of one (or more!) or they see them as ?irrelevant?. The Society of Maritime Industries faces the latter comment whenever we seek to recruit a new member. So what do we do to win over the doubters and get them to join the ?club? as detractors tend to call us? Well one example will be seen at SMM this year when probably one of the largest gatherings of national maritime trade associations will be exhibiting. It may not be immediately obvious as we will be each flying our respective national flags over the national pavilions we manage on behalf of our respective members.

However, we are more than export promoters for our national industries, important though that is. Trade associations increasingly have to develop many avenues to help support the industrial sector they represent. The Society of Maritime Industries now represents six business sectors under the maritime umbrella and these are promoted under an equivalent number of associations which may be familiar.

These are British Marine Equipment Association (BMEA), British Naval Equipment Association (BNEA), British Oil Spill Control Association (BOSCA), Association of British Offshore Industries (ABOI), Ports and Terminals Group (PTG) and most recently the Association of Marine Scientific Industries (AMSI).

Whereas each has its own policy issues to pursue the synergies of the Society?s one umbrella gives us the size to be recognised by the UK government and act as the industry spokesman particularly on behalf of our smaller company members. A further benefit of our breadth is the manner in which we have been able to represent the industry on the world wide web and our web portal www.maritimeindustries.org receives a strong stream of visitors particularly to its special page for products and services.

We also provide a focus for information and run regular seminars and workshops to assist companies develop their strategies. Currently the UK has one of the largest naval shipbuilding programmes for a quarter of a century and not unnaturally our series of seminars associated with this topic is proving extremely popular. In the end though all these activities provide members with probably the most important service we can deliver ? networking. ?Club? in another name? Maybe, but in spite of technology, face-to-face contact is still the best way to get business done and we are only too happy to be part of that process.

And that brings me back to SMM and a further thought. Even though many companies will gather under a national flag, these national distinctions are becoming increasingly blurred as many small and medium enterprises follow the global approach of their multi-national counterparts and locate production, research and development and sales operations in several countries. Could it be then that just as more of our national institutions come under central European control we will see the emergence of a supra-national trade association defying national rivalries, particularly in Europe? n