The IMPA Marine Stores Guide provides a universal coding system to facilitate communication between ships' crew, their owner/manager offices and their marine suppliers. The value of this coding system has been acknowledged for many years as a way to overcome language barriers and to ensure accurate specification of marine stores.

This was the original purpose of the IMPA Marine Stores Guide, and now it has a new and potentially more significant value. With the increasing adoption of electronic ship supply management (ecommerce), the Marine Stores Guide has become especially useful for the specification of stores items in electronic trading. If the purchaser includes the IMPA Number (already held in his purchasing system) for the required items in his electronic RFQ or Purchase Order and the supplier can read this IMPA Number directly into his sales order system, matching it to the appropriate stock item.

The use of the IMPA Marine Stores Guide in ecommerce has highlighted a limitation of the original paper-based catalogue which is that it is only updated once every 4-5 years. In the intervening period, certain items may become obscelete and others may need to be added to the guide. IMPA has recognised this limitation and will, from now on, release updates to the catalogue on a six-monthly cycle. These updates will only be available in electronic form.

To use the IMPA Marine Stores Guide in electronic form (to import the code data into your purchasing or sales order system), you will need to purchase an IMPA Marine Stores Guide Data Licence.

How much does the data cost?

The data service updates are provided within the annual subscription, which is subject to an annual renewal. Please note that the initial subscription is for a period of 3 years, based on a rolling 12 month contract which is invoiced annually.

Data Service for Ship Owners & Operators

The cost for buyers to subscribe the MSG Data Service is based on an initial one-time setup fee as well as an annual subscription fee.
This is separated into two bands – Band A and Band B.

Price band A - 5 ships or less
One time account & administration set-up fee	900 Euros
10% discount for IMPA members (90 Euros off)	810 Euros
Annual usage fee (No minimum number of ships)	50 Euros/Ship

Price band B - 6 ships or more
One time account & administration set-up fee	1250 Euros
10% discount for IMPA members (125 Euros off)	1125 Euros
Annual usage fee	50 Euros/Ship

Data Service – Ship Suppliers

The cost for suppliers, manufacturers and others to subscribe the MSG Data Service is based on an initial one-time setup fee as well as an annual subscription fee. This is separated into two bands – Band A and Band B.

Price band A - Companies/organisations with employees from 1-50
One time account & administration set-up fee	750 Euros
10% discount for IMPA members (75 Euros off)	675 Euros
Annual usage fee	500 Euros

Price band B - Companies/organisations with more than 50 employees
One time account & administration set-up fee	1500 Euros
10% discount for IMPA members (150 Euros off)	1350 Euros
Annual usage fee	1000 Euros

Enquiries and orders

If you would like to get more informations of if you want to purchase a Data Licence, please use our contact form.