A US importer and distributor of Southeast Asian foods and ingredients expects to cut its annual demurrage and detention (D&D) costs from more than $1.3 million to near zero within months of deploying Beacon, according to the supplier. The company, which Beacon does not name, manages thousands of containers a year across Asia-Pacific import lanes. The figure is a projection, not a reported result.
Beacon, which sells an AI supply chain workspace, puts the wider problem in numbers. The US Federal Maritime Commission says nine major carriers collected $15.4 billion in D&D charges between 2020 and 2025, roughly $3 billion a year globally. Beacon estimates that a business spending $50 million a year on ocean freight faces D&D exposure of $1.5 million to $4 million. It aims to cut D&D costs by more than 50 per cent on average for customers who use its D&D tools.
Charges tend to arrive weeks or months after a shipment ends, often with no clear link to the container concerned, so most businesses pay without checking. Beacon works in three areas. For prevention, it tracks free-time expiry against live ETAs so teams can act before charges accrue. For invoice verification, it links each D&D invoice to the shipment by container number, compares the days charged with actual port dwell time and checks rates against contracted terms. For contract optimisation, it uses historical performance data to negotiate free-time terms and hold carriers to account at renewal.
Fraser Robinson, CEO and co-founder of Beacon, said: "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."
Beacon says it works alongside existing ERP, TMS and spreadsheet systems with no replacement needed, and tracks shipments across more than 160 ocean and air carriers.
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