If you work in UK freight forwarding, import/export logistics, or supply chain management, you have almost certainly felt the sting of an unexpected demurrage invoice. These charges arrive quietly, often weeks after a container has left the port, and they can wipe out the margin on a shipment before anyone in the finance team even notices. CocoonDEM is a SaaS platform built specifically to stop that happening. Developed in the UK by CocoonFMS Ltd, a company with offices in London and Lichfield, CocoonDEM was selected for Cohort 1 of the Department for Transport’s Freight Innovation Fund, a government-backed programme that identifies and supports technologies with the potential to reshape UK freight. That endorsement matters, because it signals something rare in logistics software: a tool that has been scrutinised at a national level and found to deliver genuine operational value.
The platform does one thing with exceptional precision. It calculates demurrage and detention charges automatically, in real time, and with what the company describes as 100 percent accuracy. For logistics managers who have spent years wrestling with carrier spreadsheets, port tariff PDFs, and the slow drip of surprise costs, that claim is worth investigating.
Demurrage and detention are not new problems, but they remain stubbornly expensive ones. Demurrage is the charge applied when a container sits inside a port or terminal beyond its allotted free days. Detention is the equivalent charge for containers held outside the port, typically at a depot or customer facility, beyond the agreed free period. Both are designed to keep containers moving, but in practice they function as a significant and often unpredictable cost centre.
For UK freight forwarders, the challenge is compounded by the sheer number of variables involved. Every shipping line has its own tariff structure. Free time allowances differ by carrier, by port, by container type, and by contract. A container arriving at Felixstowe on a Monday might have seven free days under one agreement and only three under another. When a forwarder manages hundreds or thousands of containers per month across multiple carriers, tracking these deadlines manually becomes impossible to do reliably.
The result is a reactive cycle. Invoices arrive from carriers, often weeks after the fact. Finance teams check them against internal records, which are frequently held in Excel spreadsheets maintained by different people in different formats. Discrepancies are hard to spot, harder to prove, and almost impossible to dispute effectively. By the time a problem is identified, the money is already gone. CocoonDEM replaces that entire reactive workflow with a proactive, automated system that calculates charges as they accrue, not after the invoice lands.
CocoonDEM is a cloud-based demurrage and detention calculator that sits at the intersection of rate management, container tracking, and cost forecasting. It ingests container event data, applies the correct carrier tariffs and contractual rates, and produces a running calculation of exactly what is owed, to whom, and why. The platform is part of a broader suite of logistics tools from CocoonFMS Ltd, but it functions perfectly well as a standalone product for businesses that already have a TMS in place.
The software was not conceived in a boardroom by people who have never seen a shipping container up close. CocoonFMS was founded by James Blackman, a freight industry veteran with more than twenty years of operational experience, including a significant tenure at Kuehne + Nagel, one of the world’s largest logistics providers. Blackman built the company to address the frustrations he encountered first-hand: the manual workarounds, the spreadsheet chaos, and the constant leakage of margin through unmanaged demurrage and detention.
CocoonFMS Ltd is a UK-registered company (company number 12818706, VAT number GB 356755169) and holds a registered trademark (number 3474188). The business is self-funded, which is worth noting. In a sector where venture-backed SaaS companies often pivot or disappear, a self-funded operation signals a long-term commitment to the product and its users. The company’s growth has been steady and deliberate, driven by product development rather than marketing spend.
One of the most distinctive aspects of CocoonDEM is its positioning as a neutral source of truth between shippers and freight forwarders. In a typical logistics relationship, the forwarder calculates charges and presents them to the importer or exporter. The shipper either trusts those figures or spends hours attempting to verify them. CocoonDEM changes that dynamic by providing a shared, auditable calculation that both parties can access and trust.
For importers and consignees who work with multiple forwarders, this is particularly powerful. The platform allows them to benchmark the performance of different logistics providers using consistent, verified data. If one forwarder consistently incurs higher demurrage costs at a particular port, the data makes that visible. The conversation shifts from “we think your charges are too high” to “the data shows a pattern we need to address together.”
The accuracy claim is not marketing hyperbole. CocoonDEM includes a data validation engine that checks for logical inconsistencies in container event data. If a container is marked as delivered before its recorded arrival date, the system flags the error. If free time calculations do not align with the carrier’s published tariff, the discrepancy is surfaced. These checks happen automatically, removing the need for manual data auditing and ensuring that the numbers the system produces can be relied upon for invoicing, accruals, and commercial decisions.
The platform is built around a set of core capabilities that directly address the operational reality of managing demurrage and detention at scale.
Instant Calculations sit at the heart of the system. As soon as container event data is ingested, CocoonDEM applies the relevant rates and produces a current charge calculation. There is no batch processing delay, no end-of-month reconciliation scramble. Users can see exactly what they owe, or what they are owed, at any moment.
Free Time Management is the proactive layer that prevents charges from accruing in the first place. The system tracks free days per container, per carrier, and per port, and sends alerts before those free days expire. For a busy operations team, this transforms demurrage from a surprise cost into a manageable workflow priority. If a container at Southampton has two free days remaining, the team knows to prioritise its collection over one at London Gateway with five days left.
Rate Management allows users to store both default carrier tariffs and their own negotiated contract rates in one centralised system. This is more significant than it sounds. Many freight businesses hold rate information in multiple places: some in a TMS, some in email threads, some in the head of a long-serving operations manager. CocoonDEM consolidates all of that into a single, structured rate engine that the calculation module draws upon automatically.
Dashboards and Reporting provide real-time visibility into current liabilities, historical cost trends, and operational bottlenecks. A user can see at a glance which carriers are generating the most demurrage exposure, which ports are causing the longest delays, and how costs are tracking against budget. This data supports both day-to-day decision-making and longer-term commercial negotiations.
Container Archiving creates a complete audit trail for every container, from arrival through to final return. Every event, every rate applied, and every charge calculated is recorded and retrievable. When a carrier invoice arrives and the numbers do not match, the user can pull up the container record and see exactly where the discrepancy lies. This turns invoice disputes from a battle of assumptions into a straightforward data comparison.
The most common competitor to CocoonDEM is not another software platform. It is the Excel spreadsheet. Across the UK logistics sector, countless businesses still manage demurrage and detention using manually maintained spreadsheets, often passed between team members via email and updated on an ad hoc basis.
The problems with this approach are well understood by anyone who has lived through them. Human error is the most obvious: a mistyped date, a formula that does not copy correctly across rows, a rate that was updated in one sheet but not another. In a spreadsheet with thousands of rows, these errors are inevitable and often invisible until an invoice arrives that does not match expectations.
Beyond accuracy, spreadsheets lack real-time capability. A container’s status changes throughout the day as it moves through the port, is collected, and is returned. A spreadsheet updated once a week cannot reflect that reality. There are no automated alerts to warn that free time is expiring. There is no version control to ensure that everyone is working from the same data. And as the business grows, the spreadsheet becomes slower, more fragile, and more dependent on the one person who understands how it works.
CocoonDEM eliminates all of these failure points. The calculations are automated, so human data entry errors do not affect the charge output. The data is live, so decisions are based on current information rather than last week’s snapshot. Alerts are built in, so nothing slips through unnoticed. And the system scales effortlessly, whether the user is managing fifty containers a month or five thousand. The 100 percent accuracy claim is not just about the calculation engine; it is a direct contrast to the inherent fallibility of manual processes.
The platform serves two distinct user groups, each with its own set of priorities and pain points.
For forwarders, CocoonDEM automates one of the most time-consuming and error-prone parts of the operation: calculating demurrage and detention charges for client invoicing. Instead of pulling data from carrier websites, checking rate sheets, and building charges manually, the operations team gets a ready-to-invoice figure that they can trust. This reduces the time spent on charge calculation, speeds up the billing cycle, and improves cash flow.
Beyond invoicing, the platform helps forwarders identify bottlenecks in their own supply chain. If demurrage costs are spiking at a particular port or with a specific carrier, the data makes that visible. The forwarder can investigate the root cause, adjust processes, or renegotiate terms. What was previously a sunk cost becomes a source of operational intelligence.
For businesses that import or export goods and work with multiple freight forwarders, CocoonDEM provides something even more valuable: visibility and control. The platform consolidates container data from all forwarders into a single view, applying consistent rate calculations across the board. This allows the shipper to audit forwarder invoices for accuracy, compare performance across providers, and use the shared data to negotiate better commercial terms.
The “version of the truth” concept is most powerful in this context. When a shipper and a forwarder both have access to the same verified calculations, disputes are resolved quickly and relationships improve. The shipper is no longer entirely dependent on the forwarder’s numbers, and the forwarder benefits from a client who trusts the billing process.
CocoonDEM’s selection for Cohort 1 of the UK Department for Transport’s Freight Innovation Fund is a significant credential. The programme, delivered in partnership with Connected Places Catapult, identifies and supports technologies that can improve the efficiency, resilience, and sustainability of UK freight. Being chosen for the inaugural cohort places CocoonDEM among a small group of solutions that have been assessed and validated at a national level.
This government backing is unusual in the logistics software market and provides a level of credibility that most competitors cannot match. It signals that the platform has been evaluated against rigorous criteria and found to address a genuine industry need. For procurement teams and logistics directors evaluating software options, this external validation reduces the perceived risk of adoption.
The broader CocoonFMS ecosystem adds further weight. CocoonDEM is one of four products in the suite, alongside CocoonOPS (a transport management system), CocoonTMP, and CocoonCarbon (a carbon tracking tool). This integrated approach means that businesses using CocoonDEM can expand into other areas of logistics management without switching platforms or dealing with fragmented data.
The typical onboarding process begins with a demonstration tailored to the specific needs of the business. From there, the CocoonFMS team works with the client to import existing container data, configure carrier rates and free time rules, and set up user accounts with appropriate permissions.
Integration is a key consideration for most buyers. CocoonDEM connects natively with CocoonOPS for businesses using the broader suite. For those with an existing TMS, the platform supports API and EDI integration, allowing container event data to flow automatically into the calculation engine. The specifics of any third-party TMS integration are discussed during the scoping phase to ensure compatibility.
Once configured, the platform typically requires minimal ongoing maintenance. Rate updates can be applied centrally, and new users can be trained quickly. The emphasis is on reducing administrative burden, not adding to it.
What is the difference between demurrage and detention? Demurrage applies when a container remains inside a port or terminal beyond its free days. Detention applies when a container is held outside the port, typically at a customer’s premises or a depot, beyond the agreed free period. Both are charged by the shipping line, but they accrue in different locations and under different conditions.
Is CocoonDEM 100 percent accurate? Yes. The platform’s calculation engine applies carrier rates and contractual terms automatically, and its data validation logic checks for inconsistencies such as containers recorded as delivered before their arrival date. When the input data is correct, the output calculation is reliable and auditable.
Does CocoonDEM integrate with my existing TMS? CocoonDEM integrates natively with CocoonOPS and supports API and EDI connections to other transport management systems. Integration requirements are assessed during the onboarding process.
Who is CocoonDEM built for? The platform is designed for UK freight forwarders who need to automate client invoicing and identify operational bottlenecks, and for shippers, importers, and consignees who want visibility and control over demurrage and detention costs across multiple logistics providers.
Is CocoonDEM a UK company? Yes. CocoonFMS Ltd is registered in England and Wales (company number 12818706), with offices in London and Lichfield. The company was founded by James Blackman, a former Kuehne + Nagel executive with over twenty years in the freight industry.
Ⓒ CocoonDEM - Demurrage & Detention Calculator Trading as CocoonFMS Ltd 2025. All rights reserved. Registration No. 12818706 | VAT Number: GB 356755169
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