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Sea bridges gap in digitising freight industry with acquisition of MarDocs and a strategic partnership with Marcura

28 April 2023, London: Sea, the intelligent marketplace for fixing freight, has announced the agreed purchase of MarDocs – a recap and charterparty management platform – from Marcura, alongside a new strategic partnership between the two companies.

This will further accelerate Sea’s progress in digitising and managing chartering workflows from pre-fixture negotiation to documentation. Providing THE location for recaps and charterparties across all market segments, reflected in an annualised volume of over 43,000 fixtures and in use by over 800 customers and 550 broking companies, Sea now bridges the documentation gap in the industry benefitting charterers, brokers and owners.

The acquisition marks a new era, particularly in the wet markets where documentation management is an acute challenge with contracts dispersed across different platforms. Sea’s ecosystem enables management of the entire fixture process, providing simplicity, driving greater efficiencies and streamlining processes. Sea will be working closely with Marcura to ensure all MarDocs customers are transitioned to the Recap Manager platform. This will mean clients – including some of the largest oil companies in the world – now benefit from the enlarged offering. User benefits of the Sea platform include:

  • Simplified and streamlined chartering
    A single platform to collaborate on fixture management and charterparty/recap documentation for faster, more efficient working.
  • Enhanced confidence with better governance of terms
    Efficient, standardised charterparties/recaps with stronger controls that minimise human error and so reduce the risk of legal action.
  • Never losing a document
    Instant access to all past recaps and charterparties for easier decision-making and reporting.
  • Avoidance of disputes and miscommunication
    Agreements and amends are instantly captured for improved governance.
  • Flexible collaboration
    Access all your recaps and charterparties – from any device, anytime, anywhere. Work easily with internal colleagues and external parties on recap creation and approval.
  • Learnings that enhance the client experience
    Client preferences and specifications are automatically embedded into the contract creation process, ready to use in future negotiations.
  • Quick and convenient sharing
    Easily share recaps with your counterparties while maintaining version control.
  • Mitigation of risk for better business
    Flag high-risk clauses with a view to reducing overall exposure.

Sea will also form a new strategic partnership with Marcura, a collaboration which will help in driving the industry towards greater digitisation in freight. This partnership will focus on bringing insights from Marcura’s analysis into the Sea platform and vice-versa, including in-depth analysis of vessel behaviours in port and the cost implications upon the multiple clauses governing port activity.

Peter Schrøder, CEO of Sea, said:

“We are very pleased to announce the acquisition of MarDocs, which will move the industry forwards with its digitisation efforts. Together with our clients and partners, we are driving real change in the maritime industry, aiming for a complete ecosystem of workflow solutions that will bring simplicity and efficiency for all companies in this space and benefit the entire value chain.”

Jens Poulsen, Group CEO of Marcura, said:

“At Marcura, digitalisation of the seaborne trade execution is a priority. Our aim is to enable a maritime data standard for seamless digitalisation of pre and post-fixture processes. In selling MarDocs, we can focus on post-fixture solutions that will share data with the freight solutions of Sea.

“We know our customers want fewer and better platforms and more actionable data. We look forward to announcing the first data integrations of Marcura Maritime Master Data with Sea. With PortLog, shipping companies can measure and manage port-related risks and time, leading to better voyage profitability.”

Built to simplify the chartering process

Designed with you in mind

Introducing MarDocs, the fully independent cloud-based collaboration tool that securely enables Charterers, Owners and Brokers to go about the age-old business of managing fixtures in a whole new way.

Our simple and intuitive interface streamlines the charter party management process, making it instant and effortless to amend or agree any part of any Fixture document. Line by line, paragraph by paragraph, every change is tracked and every version saved.

When fixing a vessel, it is important that there is a well-formatted fixture recap and a full charter party for the voyage to help ensure the correct terms and conditions are applied and all parties work from the same set of documents.

Charter Party Management Company

MarDocs makes this possible.

For tanker cargoes, it allows a set of terms to be agreed between the Charterer and Vessel Owner. This comprises of a set of ‘Agreed Terms’ and the Owner’s rider clauses. The Agreed Terms are normally derived from a proforma charter party, such as BPVoy5 or AsbaTank Voyage.

MarDocs allows any party draw up the Recap by means
of a simple deal entry screen.

The Charterer can provide the Broker with the set of Agreed Terms that apply to the relevant voyage. The Owner, Charterer or Broker can then see and make amendments to the charter party. MarDocs will track and audit all changes, up until the point where the voyage is fixed. Then the documents are locked down and become unchangeable.

With MarDocs all Charter parties have online access to the very latest version
of the documents. It is all done in a simple, efficient, and transparent manner.

  • Technical details are imported into the Fixture
  • Built-in compliance, security and audit logs
  • Keyword search functionality which makes any detail easy to find
  • Technical details are imported into the Fixture
  • Built-in compliance, security and audit logs
  • Keyword search functionality which makes any detail easy to find
  • Recap and charter party templates with no formatting or layout issues
  • View and edit the latest version of your document from anywhere
  • Alerts and notification of any amendments
  • Cross-platform and browser compatibility
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