5 reasons why demurrage continues to quietly eat away at margins
Demurrage is rarely a surprise. It appears in budgets, its discussed in post-fixture reviews, and it’s often explained away as “part and parcel of the trade.”
But when the same delays occur repeatedly, demurrage stops being incidental and becomes structural margin leakage.
Below are five reasons why it persists as a common pain point, and why it continues to erode margins long after the voyage is over.
1. It is accepted as inevitable
Port congestion, weather delays, cargo readiness, documentation gaps. These are just some of the triggers behind demurrage that are often treated as external factors beyond anyone’s control. Over time, this creates a mindset shift and exposure becomes expected rather than challenged.
But while some delays are unavoidable, recurring patterns don’t have to be. Accepting demurrage as a cost of doing business often prevents deeper analysis into what could have been mitigated.
2. Visibility comes too late
For many companies, demurrage exposure becomes clear only after laytime has been exceeded. By that stage, the focus shifts to documentation, calculations, and negotiation. The commercial discussions happen after the cost has already been incurred.
Without earlier insight into port dynamics, cargo readiness, and possible operational bottlenecks, teams are left reacting instead of preventing.
3. Operational and commercial teams operate in silos
Commercial teams fix the vessel. Operations manage the port calls. Finance tracks the claim. Each function sees part of the picture, but rarely the full chain of cause and effect.
Small operational delays may appear manageable in isolation. Yet when viewed across a portfolio of voyages, they translate into significant financial exposure. Without shared visibility, the connection between day-to-day decisions and PnL impact remains blurred.
4. Lessons of the past are not embedded into future fixtures
Most companies can tell you total demurrage paid or received last year. But fewer can systematically link that exposure back to specific ports, trade lanes, counterparties, or contract structures in a way that influences future fixing strategy.
When demurrage data lives in closed claim files rather than structured performance insights, the same patterns of trading inefficiency tend to repeat.
5. The focus is on winning claims, not reducing exposure
Considerable efforts go into calculating laytime correctly and defending positions in negotiations. While this is important, strong claims management does not automatically translate into lower exposure. Even when claims are successfully recovered, internal time, strained relationships, and delayed cash flow all carry their own cost and manual work.
Reducing demurrage requires shifting attention upstream to planning, transparency, and execution, not only to post-voyage dispute handling.
Solving the problem at its source
Demurrage will always exist in maritime supply chains, particularly those defined by complexity and volatility. The question is not whether it can be eliminated entirely, but whether the recurring exposure can be reduced.
For industrial charterers, this requires more than spreadsheets and post-voyage reviews. It requires structured visibility across fixtures, port events, and voyage execution, and the ability to connect operational performance directly to commercial outcomes.
At Klaveness Digital, CargoValue was built to provide that end-to-end transparency. By linking commercial decisions with real-time operational insight, it enables teams to identify patterns earlier, strengthen planning, and reduce avoidable demurrage over time.
The objective is not simply to manage claims more efficiently, but to protect margins before they start to leak.
Learn more about how we’re working towards that goal with our customers below.