Every hour a vessel sits idle waiting for a critical part is more than an inconvenience. It is lost revenue, disrupted operations, delayed maintenance, and increased risk.

For decades, the marine and offshore industry has wrestled with a problem hiding in plain sight: fragmented maintenance, inventory, and procurement systems that make it difficult to get the right part to the right place at the right time.

That challenge became impossible for entrepreneur Bello Olanrewaju to ignore.

Based in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Marine Critical Parts Supply (MCPS) is tackling one of the marine industry’s most persistent operational challenges by helping organizations streamline maintenance, inventory, and parts procurement processes across the marine and offshore sectors.

“We pursued MCPS when we identified the trend of the maintenance, inventory and parts procurement challenge across the marine and offshore industry,” said Olanrewaju. “This is prevalent across the value chain that involves multiple players. From Asset Owners, OEMs, Freight Businesses, Regulators and others.”

What Olanrewaju saw was not a single problem, but an ecosystem-wide inefficiency. Critical assets were being sidelined by procurement delays, disconnected systems, and a lack of visibility across supply chains. For vessel operators and offshore asset owners, the consequences could be measured in lost time, lost productivity, and increased operational risk.

“Based on this trend, we believe streamlining the processes would help Asset Owners and Operators reduce risks as well as operational and Asset downtime.”

MCPS serves marine and offshore asset owners and operators while creating value for equipment manufacturers and suppliers. By improving how information and procurement workflows move throughout the supply chain, the company aims to help stakeholders make faster, more informed decisions while reducing costly delays.

Like many successful startups, MCPS began not with a finished product, but with a commitment to understanding the problem deeply before building a solution.

“We were just in the ideation phase when we connected with OSP for Lab2Market Oceans and we were a cohort in the 2024 winter,” said Olanrewaju.

Through Ocean Startup Project programs, including Lab2Market Oceans and the 2026 Ocean Idea Challenge, the team has immersed itself in customer discovery and validation, engaging directly with the people experiencing the challenges they hoped to solve.

“This experience helped us discover and validate customer pain points,” he said. “We have since evolved and the OSP program has been very supportive in our journey towards product commercialization.”

That work laid the foundation for what Olanrewaju considers the company’s most significant milestone to date.

“Customer discovery and validation and building an MVP being piloted.”

Today, MCPS is testing its solution with industry partners, collecting feedback, and refining the platform as it advances toward commercialization. The company is also working alongside SAP, a global leader in enterprise software, helping position the technology to integrate with existing enterprise systems already used throughout the marine sector.

“Firstly Lab2Market Oceans Validate in 2024 was very essential for us to understand customer pain points and the significant difference from OSP is the support in product market fit towards commercialization,” said Olanrewaju. “We are currently conducting pilots and making adjustments towards commercialization. Being a cohort of OSP is making a huge difference in achieving this feat.”

For ocean technology founders, progress is rarely linear. Regulatory requirements, risk-averse customers, and long sales cycles can make building a company particularly demanding. Yet Olanrewaju remains convinced the opportunity outweighs the challenges.

“An ocean startup is quite challenging to build due to the regulations and low threshold for uncertainties. But once the startup scales the hurdle of the adoption chasm and becomes sustainable, the opportunities are limitless.”

It is a perspective earned through experience and reflected in the advice he offers fellow entrepreneurs.

“Idea is the easiest thing, implementation is the most important thing. Any founder that can navigate the challenge of implementation will eventually succeed in their entrepreneurial journey.”

For MCPS, implementation means continuing the work already underway: moving from pilots to commercialization and helping modernize how critical maintenance and procurement decisions are made across the marine industry.

As Olanrewaju put it, the company is focused on achieving “product commercialization and adoption.”

If successful, Marine Critical Parts Supply could help create a future where critical parts are no longer the reason critical operations come to a halt.

To learn more, visit marinecriticalparts.com