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Beacon says a US importer of Southeast Asian foods is on track to cut annual demurrage and detention costs from more than USD $1.3 million to near zero within months after deploying its supply chain software.
The importer and distributor manages thousands of containers a year across Asia-Pacific routes, making demurrage and detention fees a material cost in its ocean freight operations.
Beacon is targeting average reductions of more than 50% in these charges for customers using its demurrage and detention tools across their operations. Its approach checks invoices against live shipment data and contracted terms, rather than leaving importers to accept charges without verification.
Demurrage and detention fees are typically imposed when containers remain too long at ports or are returned late. The charges often arrive weeks or months after a shipment is completed, making them difficult for finance and logistics teams to match to individual containers and assess against contractual free-time allowances.
According to figures Beacon cited from the US Federal Maritime Commission, nine major carriers collected USD $15.4 billion in demurrage and detention charges between 2020 and 2025. Beacon estimates that a business spending USD $50 million a year on ocean freight may face annual exposure of between USD $1.5 million and USD $4 million.
How it works
The software tracks the expiry of free time against live estimated arrival times so teams can act before charges build up. When an invoice arrives, it links the bill to the original shipment through the container number, checks the days charged against actual port dwell time, and verifies rates against contracted terms.
Beacon also uses historical shipment performance data to support negotiations with carriers over free-time allowances and contract renewals. It argues that tighter monitoring can help importers challenge charges that might previously have been paid without review.
The issue has drawn wider attention as importers scrutinise supply chain costs more closely. Demurrage and detention charges often sit between operations, procurement and finance teams, leaving ownership unclear and reducing the chances of a detailed challenge when invoices arrive.
Beacon says this gap has allowed avoidable costs to persist, with many businesses still lacking a clear link between an invoice and the shipment events needed to determine whether a fee is justified.
"Demurrage and detention has been treated as an unavoidable cost of doing business for too long, and most are paying charges they could prevent, dispute or negotiate away. As AI makes it easier for shippers to prevent and dispute those charges systematically, businesses that get ahead of this now will hold a real cost advantage over those that don't," said Fraser Robinson, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Beacon.
The company works with finance and operations teams by linking freight contracts, shipments and invoices in one system. Its platform tracks ocean and air shipments across more than 160 carriers and can be used alongside existing ERP, transport management and spreadsheet-based workflows.
Named customers include Fever-Tree, Tilda Rice and Tata Consumer Products.