Dubai-headquartered Marcura has acquired the business assets of US-based demurrage and marine claims specialist Fairway Maritime.
The deal is designed to strengthens Marcura’s demurrage management services in the US while adding specialist expertise across tanker, inland barge, and commodity trading markets.
Established in 2005, Fairway Maritime manages claims for shipowners, vessel pools, refiners, and trading companies across the US and Europe. The company’s analysts handle demurrage, deviation, shifting, detention, and other maritime reimbursement claims.
The transaction follows Marcura’s previous acquisitions of HubSE and Shipdem, which the company says makes Marcura Claims the industry’s largest laytime processor by volume. The combined division operates self-serve laytime tools, AI-assisted claims processing, and fully managed services across all major cargo segments.
“Marcura’s platform puts AI to work where it adds the most value, taking on more of the heavy lifting in a claim, such as 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. For customers who need a fully managed service, that means even greater confidence in the claims that are hardest to get right.”
To support its digital tools, Marcura processes more than 200,000 port calls and US$17 billion in payments annually, representing a third of global seaborne commodities. The group also manages crew payments across more than 150 currencies for over 150,000 seafarers in both cruise and commercial shipping segments.
“We built Fairway Maritime on a simple promise: hand us the documents and we will handle everything through to collection,” said Tom Black, Managing Partner, 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.”
Under the terms of the deal, Fairway will be fully integrated into Marcura Claims to manage the combined demurrage portfolio. The existing team of analysts will continue to work with their existing customers, with Mr Black remaining in an advisory role.
