Marcura has acquired the business assets of US-based demurrage and marine claims specialist Fairway Maritime, positioned to fully integrate the firm into its Marcura Claims division. By pairing Fairway’s twenty years of tanker, barge, and commodity expertise with its own AI-assisted infrastructure, Marcura secures its position as the maritime industry’s largest laytime processor by volume.
Dubai, UAE | July 14, 2026 – Maritime software and data giant Marcura has finalized the acquisition of the business assets of Houston-based Fairway Maritime LLC, a prominent specialist in demurrage and marine claims management. The acquisition directly expands Marcura’s footprint in the highly specialized US tanker, inland barge, and commodity trading markets. By absorbing Fairway’s infrastructure, Marcura secures critical domestic claims-handling expertise to complement its expanding digital portfolio. The financial terms of the asset purchase agreement have not been disclosed.
Following its recent acquisitions of HubSE and Shipdem, this latest transaction cements Marcura Claims as the global maritime industry’s largest laytime and demurrage processor by volume, spanning dry bulk, wet bulk, and specialized liner operations.
Bridging the Tech Gap: Human Expertise Meets AI Laytime
The transaction addresses a critical hurdle in maritime technology: the management of highly complex, legally dense “edge cases” in contract execution.
While automated systems excel at data extraction, the final resolution of multi-million dollar shipping disputes still hinges on human commercial judgment. Fairway’s analytical team, comprising veterans from the demurrage, operations, and trading desks of major oil majors and commodity houses, will be tasked with refining Marcura’s predictive models.
The Marcura Claims Processing Pipeline
- Ingestion: Raw shipping documentation, contracts, and complex charterparties are fed directly into the system.
- AI-Driven Processing: The Marcura AI Engine scans the files to read documents, extract specific clauses, and standardize complex laytime calculations.
- Human Validation: Experienced Fairway Analysts provide expert human oversight, applying seasoned commercial judgment to resolve frequent and intricate laytime “edge cases.”
- Resolution: The finalized, verified outputs are seamlessly processed through to successfully settled and collected demurrage claims.
“Marcura’s technology platform puts AI to work where it adds the most value, taking on more of the heavy lifting in a claim: reading documents, extracting clauses, and standardising calculations,” said Henrik Hyldahn, Group CEO of Marcura. “But AI is not a project you complete; it is a production that runs every day, and it only stays reliable when experts continuously train and correct it. The outcome still turns on commercial judgement. Edge cases in demurrage are frequent, and Fairway has spent twenty years making those calls.”
Transaction Breakdown & Operational Integration
The integration strategy focuses on maintaining strict service continuity while transitioning Fairway’s legacy book of business onto Marcura’s global software architecture.
| Operational Pillar | Integration Strategy & Impact |
| Brand & Team Alignment | Fairway will be fully absorbed into the Marcura Claims division. The existing analyst team remains intact. |
| Portfolio Scope | Expands Marcura’s capabilities across US inland waterways, coastal barges, and complex transatlantic tanker trades. |
| Asset Transition | Fairway’s proprietary claims historical data will help train Marcura’s large language models (LLMs) for contract analysis. |
| Leadership | Tom Black, Managing Partner of Fairway Maritime, will transition into an advisory role to oversee client migration. |
Eradicating Laytime Leakage
Founded in 2005, Fairway Maritime built its reputation on a full-service outsourcing model for shipowners, vessel pools, refiners, and trading firms across the US and Europe. Beyond standard demurrage calculations, the company specializes in recovering secondary operational losses:
- Deviation Claims: Recouping bunkering and time losses from unscheduled route changes.
- Shifting & Detention: Documenting and billing costly delays during terminal-to-berth shifting or unexpected customs holds.
- Barge Layout Complexities: Handling multi-parcel, multi-party discharge variables inherent to US Gulf logistics.
“We built Fairway Maritime on a simple promise: hand us the documents and we will handle everything through to collection,” noted Tom Black, Managing Partner of Fairway Maritime. “Joining the Marcura team means keeping true to that promise, with added muscle. The work Marcura is doing with AI-assisted claims management is exciting. That ongoing investment, at scale, is something our team and our customers stand to benefit from.”
Current Fairway Maritime clients will experience uninterrupted day-to-day claims handling, backed immediately by Marcura’s larger global balance sheet, round-the-clock support infrastructure, and specialized tech stack.
About Marcura
Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Dubai, Marcura is a leading global digital solutions provider that connects the critical workflows keeping global shipping moving, from port spend management and procurement to compliance and financial transactions. By combining AI-driven automation with the human expertise of over 1,000 maritime specialists, the company eliminates repetitive manual work to transform fragmented data into decision-ready intelligence. Marcura serves over 950 shipping companies worldwide through its specialized product suite, including DA-Desk, PortLog, Claims, ShipServ, VesselMan, MarTrust, and Brightwell Navigator, which collectively handles more than 200,000 port calls and $17 billion in payments annually. Supporting vessels that transport one-third of global seaborne commodities, Marcura also provides vital global payroll infrastructure ensuring that over 150,000 cruise and commercial seafarers are paid reliably every month.
Source: Marcura