Worldwide Quality Assurance

CEFIC SQAS (Safety and Quality Assessment Systems for the Transport/Storage/Handling of Chemicals)

CEFIC, The European Chemical Industry Council, represents directly or indirectly about 40,000 chemical companies in Europe. CEFIC consists of national chemical industry federations of 22 countries in Europe and large international companies, which are members in their own right.

In 1991 chemical companies recognized the need to take a renewed look at the safety, quality and environmental aspects related to the provision of logistic services. As a consequence working groups, with membership from national chemical federations, chemical companies and representative logistic service providers were established to develop a Safety and Quality Assessment System (SQAS) for logistic services.

With time, SQAS has evolved into a number of Safety and Quality Assessment Systems (SQAS), each related to a particular transport mode or logistic operation. SQAS Assessment commonly addresses areas such as: Communications, Equipment Maintenance and Inspection, Management Policy, Operational Instructions, Quality, Safety, Health and Environmental Procedures, Security and Site Inspection.

SQAS enables chemical companies to have the quality and safety management systems of their logistic service providers assessed in a uniform manner, thereby avoiding multiple assessments by individual chemical companies. The results of an SQAS assessment, carried out by an independent assessor, do not lead to a certificate but are used by an individual chemical company to evaluate the performance of its service providers. SQAS helps, along with other tools and criteria, in the process of selecting service suppliers and in defining improvement areas with each of them.