Marcura Buys Fairway Maritime to Boost Demurrage Claims

Marcura Expands Claims Business With Fairway Maritime Acquisition

Marcura has acquired the business assets of Fairway Maritime LLC, a US-based firm specializing in demurrage and marine claims management. According to a report by The Maritime Executive, the deal strengthens Marcura’s presence in the American demurrage market while bringing in specialist knowledge covering tanker, inland barge, and commodity trading segments.

Fairway Maritime, established in 2005, has handled the full claims lifecycle — demurrage, deviation, shifting, detention, and other reimbursement claims — on behalf of shipowners, vessel pools, refiners, and trading firms operating in both the US and Europe. Its analysts have backgrounds on the trading and operations desks of major oil companies and commodity houses, giving them experience negotiating claims from both the owner and charterer perspective.

Building Out an AI-Assisted Claims Platform

Marcura Group CEO Henrik Hyldahn framed the acquisition as part of a broader push to combine automation with human judgment in claims processing. He described the company’s technology as using AI to handle repetitive tasks such as document review, clause extraction, and calculation standardization, while noting that this kind of system requires constant oversight from experienced staff to remain accurate. He pointed to the frequency of edge cases in demurrage disputes as the reason Fairway’s two decades of specialist experience add value, particularly for clients relying on fully managed claims services.

The purchase follows Marcura’s earlier acquisitions of HubSE and Shipdem, and the company says these combined moves have made Marcura Claims the largest laytime processor in the industry by volume. The claims division now offers a spread of services — self-serve laytime tools, AI-assisted processing, and fully managed claims handling — across major cargo types.

Fairway Maritime Managing Partner Tom Black said the firm was built around a straightforward commitment: taking in a client’s documents and managing the claim through to final collection. He said joining Marcura allows Fairway to keep that promise while gaining additional resources, and expressed interest in the ongoing development of Marcura’s AI-assisted claims tools. Black will stay on with Marcura in an advisory role, while Fairway’s existing analyst team continues serving its current customers, now under Marcura’s broader demurrage management structure. Marcura says current Fairway clients will see continuity of service, backed by its global infrastructure.

What It Means for Owners, Managers, and Charterers

Demurrage disputes remain one of the most persistent sources of friction and cost between owners and charterers, often hinging on details captured — or missed — during loading and discharge operations. Consolidation among claims specialists, paired with AI-driven document processing, points toward faster turnaround on routine claims, but the underlying quality of a claim still depends heavily on accurate, well-documented survey evidence gathered at the terminal.

For technical managers and operators, this trend is a reminder that the strength of any demurrage or detention claim is only as good as the underlying data: timestamps, cargo condition records, draft readings, and loading/discharge logs. Independent surveys — covering draft surveys, cargo hold inspections, and condition reporting — remain the practical foundation that claims teams, however automated, rely on to substantiate disputed time and reimbursement claims. As claims processing becomes faster and more consolidated across the industry, the accuracy and completeness of on-site inspection records at the point of loading or discharge will matter just as much, if not more, for owners looking to protect their commercial position.

Reviewed by Ibrahim Halil Ceylan, Marine Surveyor at Apeks Marine.