The Marcura Group acquires ShipServ

The Marcura Group today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire ShipServ, a leading maritime online procurement platform and marketplace.  This strategic acquisition marks a significant milestone for both companies and is expected to be finalised in the coming weeks.  Upon merging, both companies will benefit from joint talent, expertise, and a broadened solutions portfolio to deliver an innovative, customer-centric platform built for the Blue Economy.  ShipServ’s 126 employees will come together 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.

Jens Poulsen, Marcura Group CEO said: “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 organisations.  Both organisations share a foundation based on industry expertise and unwavering customer satisfaction, which will drive our joint product evolution, enhancing value across our customer base.”

“Marcura and ShipServ are a complementary fit that will combine broad product offerings and market presence with an established platform.  Our shared extensive maritime experience, dedication to excellence, and a commitment to providing exceptional customer service makes this collaboration a natural choice.  I am confident that our organisations will foster a close cultural alignment.”

Henrik Hyldahn, CEO of ShipServ, emphasised the advantages of becoming part of a larger family of renowned brands and solutions which, like ShipServ, share a common mission to drive innovation within the maritime industry.  Hyldahn stated, “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 digitalisation, efficiency and compliance.”  

Poulsen concluded, “Marcura’s existing suite of solutions in port spend management, compliance, port optimisation intelligence, and supplier, agent, and crew payments has already established strong relationships with various departments within ship owner and operating companies.  The integration with ShipServ, which serves customers in similar companies but in different departments, will yield synergistic benefits.  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 specialised procurement, logistics monitoring and relevant pricing data points integrating into our existing platforms.”

ShipServ will continue to operate as a separate company, maintaining its own brand identity.

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.  Jan-Olivier Fillols, Board Director of Marcura and a managing director of Marlin expressed his satisfaction with the collaboration saying, “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.”