Fairplay was a weekly news magazine devoted to the international merchant shipping industry, delivering “content tailored for its core audience of ship owners, managers, operators and charterers.“[1] It was founded by Thomas Hope Robinson in 1883 and remained in continual publication until 2018.

[3] In 1973, the Fairplay company was taken over by the Financial Times group, before a management buy-out in 1978, one of the first in the UK, transferred ownership to Prime Publications.

[2] Prime improved the data management sector by storing information in databases and started to sell directories on CD-ROM in the 1990s.

The next years saw several acquisitions of other companies and, in 2004, a partnership with HITT of the Netherlands, which created AISLive, a broadcast system for tracking vessel movements.

[4] The organisation was then based in Coulsdon, UK, with offices in America, Singapore, Sweden and a network of correspondents worldwide.