Axiome found $13,966 the manual claim missed.
MV Harvest Horizon, a Constanta wheat discharge under GENCON 1994. Axiome read the whole voyage file and reconciled the demurrage claim clause by clause: it found $24,988against the post-fixture team’s $11,022, and caught the missing Bills of Lading before the 45-day time bar.
The post-voyage work a desk has no time for. Done in minutes.
This claim arrived as 14 forwarded documents. Turning that into a demurrage claim you can defend means reading every one, reconciling every timed event against the charter party, knowing where the case law overrides the arithmetic, and checking the package for the defect that time-bars a claim. On every voyage, inside 45 days, usually with no dedicated analyst. That is why the manual claim came in at $11,022.
- Read 14 documents spread across email, PDF and Excel
- Reconcile roughly 40 timed events against 18 rider clauses, by eye
- Build the laytime statement by hand, then somehow catch the timezone slip, the rain-on-demurrage rule and the mis-classified crane
- Remember to assemble every supporting document before the 45-day bar
Hours of skilled work per voyage. The manual claim still came in at $11,022 and carried a defect that could time-bar it.
- Read every document, each value carrying the source page it was read from
- Mapped every laytime period to the clause that governs it, then recomputed deterministically
- Surfaced 4 recoverable errors the manual claim missed, worth +$13,966
- Flagged the 3 missing Bills of Lading with 9 days left to the deadline
Minutes. Every figure traces to the document it was read from, then a person reviews it before anything is sent.
Marcura and Veson process the claim you submit. Axiome audits the file for the claim you did not know you had, then shows its work: every figure sourced, the maths deterministic, a person in the loop before it is sent.
One Panamax, one discharge, money quietly owed.
A 75,200 DWT bulk carrier loaded 71,450 MT of wheat at Pivdennyi and discharged at Constanta. The vessel went on demurrage at the discharge port, and the claim that followed was under-stated and incomplete.
Fourteen documents, the way a claim actually arrives.
Forwarded emails, port-agent statements, surveys, bills of lading. Axiome ingested and read every one. Open any to see the original.
Every hour, read from the Statement of Facts.
Rain during laytime and Sundays are excepted; shore-crane and phytosanitary time are Charterers' risk and count; the vessel's own gear does not.
Received 05:48 by Constanta Port Agents SRL
NOR before noon → 14:00 same day (Rider Cl. 3)
6h 00m excepted during laytime (SHEX EIU)
2h 15m, terminal equipment, Charterers' risk (Rider Cl. 6). Counts.
Charterers' import obligation, counts
24h 00m excepted
214h 21m consumed
1h 30m, vessel gear, does NOT count (GENCON Cl. 4(c))
7h 45m, counts (once on demurrage)
Four findings. Not one of them a calculator would catch.
The desk's arithmetic was fine. Its inputs, its law and its paperwork were not. Each finding is grounded in a clause, and each is the kind of thing a busy post-fixture desk misses, which is exactly why the claim was $11,022 and not $24,988.
The desk read the Constanta NOR against Pivdennyi local time and applied the 08:00-next-day rule. NOR was tendered 05:45 local Constanta, before noon, so laytime commenced 14:00 the same day. The corrected start flows through the whole statement and adds $5,260 of countable demurrage.
A one-line timezone slip on the input. Every calculation after it was arithmetically correct, so nothing downstream looked wrong. The kind of error that survives a re-check, because the maths is not where it lives.
The desk deducted 9h 02m of rain under the SHEX EIU weather clause. Once laytime has expired and demurrage runs, laytime exceptions no longer interrupt it absent an express clause, and there is none here. The rain counts in full on demurrage (The Spalmatori; Steamship Mutual guidance).
A point of law, not a number. A spreadsheet applies the weather clause everywhere; only knowing the doctrine tells you it stops the moment the vessel goes on demurrage.
The first submission omitted the 3 B/Ls. Under Tricon Energy v MTM Trading [2020] EWHC 700, 'all supporting documents' is read strictly and includes the B/Ls even where the calculation does not depend on them. A defective package can time-bar the entire claim. Flagged with 9 days to the 18 May deadline and cured before filing.
A procedural gap, not a miscalculation. No laytime calculator checks it, because the missing document is not part of the maths, it just voids the claim the maths supports.
Shore grab crane No.2 (Liebherr LHM 550) failed for 2h 15m and was deducted as if it were vessel gear. It is terminal equipment, Charterers' risk under Rider Cl. 6, and counts as laytime. Added back.
One line in a four-page Statement of Facts, and it turns entirely on whose equipment failed. It reads as an ordinary stoppage; only the clause decides who carries the time.
The laytime statement, period by period.
214h 21m (8.9313 d) allowed. Counted periods consume laytime, then run as demurrage once it expires.
| Period | From | To | Time | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waiting + ops begin | 29 Mar 14:00 | 29 Mar 22:45 | 8h 45m | Laytime runs WIBON from 14:00 |
| Discharge operations | 29 Mar 22:45 | 30 Mar 00:00 | 1h 15m | Operations |
| Rain stoppageexcepted | 30 Mar 00:00 | 30 Mar 06:00 | 6h 00m | SHEX EIU weather |
| Discharge resumes | 30 Mar 06:00 | 30 Mar 09:15 | 3h 15m | Operations |
| Shore crane No.2 failure | 30 Mar 09:15 | 30 Mar 11:30 | 2h 15m | Terminal equipment, Charterers' risk (Cl. 6) |
| Operations + meal break | 30 Mar 11:30 | 30 Mar 18:00 | 5h 45m | Meal break excluded during laytime |
| Phytosanitary inspection | 30 Mar 18:00 | 30 Mar 19:30 | 1h 30m | Charterers' import obligation |
| Operations | 30 Mar 19:30 | 31 Mar 00:00 | 4h 30m | Operations |
| Sundayexcepted | 31 Mar 00:00 | 01 Apr 00:00 | 24h 00m | SHEX EIU |
| Waiting + operations | 01 Apr 00:00 | 02 Apr 00:00 | 24h 00m | Ops, incl. hatch 3 grain sweep |
| Rain (laytime portion)excepted | 02 Apr 00:00 | 02 Apr 04:43 | 4h 43m | Excepted until laytime expires |
Challenged, defended, collected.
Charterers challenged the rain-on-demurrage point; Axiome's clause analysis backed the rebuttal. The claim settled at $21,500, $10,478 more than the manual claim would have produced.