Online Procurement News

The Marcura Group signed a definitive agreement to acquire ShipServ, a maritime online procurement platform and marketplace. ShipServ’s 126 employees will come together with Marcura’s 850 to serve a combined customer base of 800 maritime customers and a network of 47,000 maritime suppliers globally. ShipServ will continue to operate as a separate company, maintaining its own brand identity.The acquisition has been overseen by Marlin Equity Partners, a global investment firm with over $8.9 billion of capital under management, that made a growth equity investment in Marcura in August 2022.

Ship suppliers are managing to weather the economic storm by putting solid and vetted business partnerships ahead of any major move towards online procurement, according to the industry’s leading trade body. The International Shipsuppliers & Services Association (ISSA) said that while e-commerce was clearly part of the ship supply sector, it was the traditional practices of the small to medium sized supply businesses that were proving more resilient in today’s turbulent economic times than “the global behemoths that have been shown to try and fail spectacularly over the past 20 years”.

Inmarsat, the original mobile satcom provider for the maritime industry, has been riding the crest of a wave recently, with users at an all-time high, overall 99.9 per cent satellite reliability and the launch of its Fleet F77, Mobile ISDN and Mobile Packet Data services for the maritime community. Ruth Ling reports on what's new and what lies on the horizon. Twenty years ago, a revolution hit the maritime industry. Satellite communications became available to ships at sea. Back in 1982, when Inmarsat began offering onboard satellite communications, its first and only system was Inmarsat A, which offered voice, facsimile, telex and data services. After nine years of successful service and expansion into most maritime sectors, Inmarsat began offering Inmarsat C.