Major expansion at GPA drives business

At the Georgia Foreign Trade Conference on 4 February, Griff Lynch, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority announced the acquisition of 145 contiguous acres to the Port of Savannah, or more than 1m twenty-foot equivalent container units in annual capacity.

“As the Georgia Ports Authority enters its 75th year, we are proud to follow in the tradition of those who came before us, making exciting advances in capacity and technology to ensure our terminals remain at the forefront of global commerce,” Mr Lynch said. “This is the largest addition of container terminal space in Savannah in more than 20 years, and represents a powerful opportunity for Georgia to take on new trade.”

Savannah’s Ocean Terminal will be partially converted to handle containers. Renovations at Ocean Terminal, located just downriver from the main container port, will include a new truck gate, upgraded container yards and rubber-tired gantry cranes for container operations.

Construction is currently under way on the upgrades. Phase I of the Ocean Terminal container yard is expected to be completed by the end of 2020.

Lynch also outlined plans for the new Savannah Container Terminal, a nearly 200-acre facility to be built on Hutchinson Island. The new facility will have a capacity of 2.5m TEUs when fully developed. Phase I is projected to come online in 2025.

Lynch also announced that Garden City Terminal dock construction had been completed, and can now serve three 14,000-TEU vessels, and up to eight vessels simultaneously.

The improved dock and additional container yard space are part of a larger blueprint to increase the GPA’s capacity to more than 9m TEUs by 2030. By 2023, the GPA will add an additional berth, for a total of four big ship vessel slots.