Featured Port! The Port of Savannah

Savannah itself holds the distinction of having the largest single-terminal container facility of its kind in North America. The port is comprised of two modern, deepwater terminals—Garden City Terminal and Ocean Terminal. With the former being the fourth busiest in the country regarding container handling.

Altogether, Savannah is under the greater collection of Georgia’s port system and is governed by Georgia Ports Authority (GPA). Savannah’s sister ports are Brunswick (a fellow deepwater port) and three inland terminals—Chatsworth, Bainbridge, and Columbus.

In unison, they work together to ensure the movement of raw materials and finished products alike to and from destinations around the globe.

Last month, GPA announced a mix bag of results for its volumes. On one hand, total cargo throughput decreased 11.5 percent, however an impressive 21 percent year-over-year increase in the outbound department.

The Port of Savannah moved 110,305 TEUs of exports in January. That translates to an increase of 11,419 units from January 2022.

GPA boss Griff Lynch touts strong January growth in their outbound trade lanes to Europe. The earlier months of the year are typically when agriculture exports are hot and many farmers and producers are looking to push their time sensitive product off to sea.

Lynch blushed that Savannah was able to support this steady surge in exports and deliver on facilitating the movement of ag exports.

While the export side of things saw a lift, as the decrease in total cargo throughput suggests, overall port activity has cooled off, especially from the unfathomable highs in 2021 and 2022.

But in face of a softer market, the port authority isn’t just skipping stones and waiting for more vessels to come by. Rather, GPA has turned this lull into an opportunity for progress on infrastructure projects.

In fact, a project to enable Savannah’s Garden City Terminal to serve larger vessels is around 80 percent complete with half of the new massive cranes set to work at berth arriving this past month.

The improvements are expected to be finished in July. Should everything go to plan, Savannah would be able to serve four vessels each with 16,000 TEU capacity as well as three additional ships—at the same time. The project will add 1.5 million TEUs of annual berth capacity, GPA notes.

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Information courtesy of Georgia Ports Authority. Map imagery courtesy of?MarineTraffic.