April intermodal mark for Georgia ports
Written by Railway Age Staff
The Mason Intermodal Container Transfer Facility at the Georgia Ports Authority’s Garden City Terminal. Photo: Georgia Ports Authority/Stephen B. Morton
It's springtime, and that means record container volume is in bloom at the Port of Savannah.
Record April volume pushed the Georgia Ports Authority’s fiscal year-to-date totals to more than 3.4 million twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEU), an increase of 8.8%, or 280,000 TEUs compared to the first 10 months of fiscal 2017.
“We’re on track to move more than 300,000 TEUs in every month of the fiscal year, which will be a first for the Authority,” said GPA Executive Director Griff Lynch. “We’re also anticipating this to be the first fiscal year for the Port of Savannah to handle more than 4 million TEUs.”
April volumes reached 356,700 TEUs, up 7.1% percent on-year. The Port of Savannah’s compound annual growth rate is better than 5% over the past decade.
Both CSX and Norfolk Southern operate on-terminal services.
The GPA Board has approved $66 million in terminal upgrades, including $24 million for the purchase of 10 additional rubber-tired gantry (RTG) cranes.
“The Authority is committed to building additional capacity ahead of demand to ensure the Port of Savannah remains a trusted link in the supply chain serving Georgia and the Southeast,” Lynch said.
The crane purchase will bring the fleet at Garden City Terminal to 156 RTGs. The new cranes will support three new container rows, which the board approved in March. The additional container rows will increase annual capacity at Savannah by 150,000 TEUs. The RTGs will work over stacks that are five containers high and six deep, with a truck lane running alongside the stacks. Capable of running on electricity, the cranes will have a lift capacity of 50 metric tons.
The cranes will arrive in two batches of five in the first and second quarters of calendar year 2019.
