Outgoing SEPWA president Andrew Fowler said the progressive grower group didn't want to "step on CBH's toes" with its handling of the project.

But he said members were excited by the marketing opportunities of the deregulated market and wanted to assess their options.

"We don't want to become our own exporter because SEPWA is not committed to becoming too commercially driven," he said.

"We just want to facilitate the marketing of grain to end users and promote Esperance grain and hopefully the benefits of that flow back to our members."

The SEPWA project involves an application for Royalties for Regions funding from the State Government.

Mr Fowler said if successful, the funding would be used to investigate the viability of shipping containerised grain exports out of the Esperance port zone, into niche markets.

He said the plan was being driven by the fact there was an unused container shipping facility at the Esperance port.

"We just want to do the numbers," he said.

"In Esperance, we need an industry like the grains industry to provide a base load for containers at the port.

"From that, it can be used by the abattoir and a lot of other agricultural industries in Esperance can benefit from having that service, but we need a regular base load.

"Who knows where it's going to go because we still need to get funding for the project.

"This is just a preliminary investigation to understand the economics and practicalities of it, but we won't just be focussed on wheat export's that's for sure.

"A few members of the executive committee are helping to drive this and they will support our project officer Nigel Metz, who has written up the project, so we will see where it leads.

"We have to be careful though, because we are not trying to go around CBH.

"We just want to see if it can work here in Esperance and CBH may well be a key part of that."