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Marcura Group has acquired online maritime trading platform ShipServ
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ShipServ will continue to operate as a separate firm, maintaining its own brand identity
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Both will serve a combined 800 blue-chip maritime clients and a network of 47,000 maritime suppliers globally
Marcura Group has acquired ShipServ, a maritime online procurement platform and marketplace, with the deal expected to be finalized in the coming weeks.
ShipServ will continue operating as a separate company, maintaining its brand identity.
ShipServ’s 126 employees will combine with Marcura’s 850 to serve a combined customer base of 800 blue-chip maritime customers and a network of 47,000 maritime suppliers globally.
Upon merging, both companies will benefit from joint talent, expertise, and a broadened solutions portfolio to deliver a sophisticated, customer-centric platform built for the Blue Economy, Marcura Group said in a statement.
“The combination of Marcura and ShipServ creates an industry-leading vertical software, data, payments and procurement platform focused on the maritime sector. Our extensive blue-chip customer base spans the world’s largest commodity shipping, container and cruise line organizations. Both organizations share a foundation based on industry expertise and unwavering customer satisfaction, which will drive our joint product evolution, enhancing value across our customer base,” said Jens Poulsen, Marcura Group CEO.
Henrik Hyldahn, CEO of ShipServ, emphasized the advantages of becoming part of a larger family of renowned brands and solutions that, like ShipServ, “share a common mission to drive innovation within the maritime industry.”
“Joining forces with Marcura will allow us to further accelerate network adoption and reinforce our positioning within the joint company’s wider platform. Our integration with Marcura will enable our team to increase the long-term strategic value and product differentiation of ShipServ’s e-procurement offerings. By incorporating additional features such as payments, proprietary compliance data and settlement workflow, we can offer solutions to the industry’s growing need for digitalization, efficiency and compliance,” said Hyldahn.
“Marcura’s existing suite of solutions in port spend management, compliance, port optimization intelligence, and supplier, agent, and crew payments has already established strong relationships with various departments within ship [owners] and operating companies. The integration with ShipServ, which serves customers in similar companies but in different departments, will yield synergistic benefits,” explained the Marcura Group CEO.
“Moreover, ShipServ will leverage Marcura’s profound expertise in KYC (Know Your Customer) and compliance across its solutions, significantly enhancing customer experiences. Likewise, Marcura’s customers will benefit from the highly specialized procurement, logistics monitoring and relevant pricing data points integrating into our existing platforms,” concluded Poulsen.
Jan-Olivier Fillols, Board Director of Marcura and a managing director of Marlin, expressed his satisfaction with the collaboration.
“We are excited to support the combination of Marcura and ShipServ, two maritime industry leaders propelling synergistic and highly complementary business strategies. We believe that from both a customer and product perspective, our ability to offer a combined suite of solution sets will create a differentiator in the market,” he said.
The acquisition has been overseen by Marlin Equity Partners (“Marlin”), a global investment firm with over $8.9 billion of capital under management that made a growth equity investment in Marcura in August 2022.
