by Dave Williams | Dec 9, 2021 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Supply chain issues aren’t affecting the Port of Savannah’s ability to move containerized cargo.
The port’s Garden City Terminal handled 495,750 twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) last month, a 6.7% increase over November of last year and a new monthly record for the Georgia Ports Authority.
In fact, Savannah has set record cargo volumes for 16 consecutive months, authority Executive Director Griff Lynch said Thursday.
During the last six months, the port has begun a series of improvements aimed at growing Savannah’s annual cargo capacity by 25%.
Those projects have allowed the port to increase its container handling space by 200,000 TEUs, with another 200,000 TEUs of capacity to be added by the end of this month.
Another 500,000 TEUs of cargo space will be added by March, raising total new capacity to 1.6 million TEUs by June.
“Through the cooperation of our customers and the innovative thinking of our operations team, we’ve trimmed the number of boxes on terminal to allow for more efficient container handling and faster vessel service,” said Joel Wooten, the authority’s board chairman.
“Additionally, crews are working every day to build the new container yard and dock space that will keep commerce flowing.”
The Savannah port also has activated four “pop-up” container yards near manufacturing and distribution centers in Savannah, Statesboro, Atlanta, and near the authority’s inland terminal in Northwest Georgia’s Murray County to reduce the length of storage time at the port.
Eventually, there will be 500,000 TEUs of annual capacity at those off-port sites.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
