Georgia Ports Authority gets OK to build $2.3B Savannah container terminal

SAVANNAH — The Georgia Ports Authority’s ever-expanding operations along the Savannah River have been given the all clear for its biggest project to date.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the permit for the planned $2.3 billion Savannah Container Terminal after a three-year review, the authority’s president, Kevin Price, announced at the GPA’s annual State of the Port of Savannah luncheon on Wednesday.

Work on the new 395-acre container terminal, which will be Savannah’s third, is expected to begin in January 2028. It will be anchored by three ship berths and help boost Savannah’s annual container capacity from its current 7.75 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEU) to more than 12 million TEUs when it is completed in the mid-2030s.

The expansion positions Savannah to potentially surpass the East Coast’s busiest port, the New York/New Jersey Ports Authority, which is on track to handle nearly 9 million TEUs this year.

“We’re excited about the Savannah Container Terminal’s role in our future growth and investment plans,” Price said.

The annual state of the port event at the Savannah Convention Center drew an estimated 1,700 attendees from across the state and the shipping industry.

Port officials said Savannah container traffic has been strong this fall with a record September and double-digit growth in October. They predicted volume in the current fiscal year will top 6 million TEUs for the first time, boosted by growing imports from Asia and elsewhere at the two existing terminals.

Cargo owners shipped 5.67 million TEUs through Port of Savannah docks in fiscal 2026, which ended June 30, little changed from 5.7 million the year before, according to the GPA.

“The Georgia Ports Authority is always looking ahead, always setting new records,” said U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, who represents the 1st Congressional District, which includes coastal Georgia.

The luncheon served as the public introduction for Price. He was hired in February to succeed Chief Executive Griff Lynch, who is retiring in August. Lynch has led the GPA since 2016 after serving as chief operating officer for five years.

Price joined the GPA from Gateway Terminals, the organization that acts as the stevedore at the Savannah facilities, hiring the dockworkers that make up much of the port’s workforce. The dockworkers are union members with the International Longshoremen’s Association.

The Savannah Container Terminal will add 3.5 million TEUs of capacity. It follows on the heels of an $1.6 billion upgrade of the Ocean Terminal at the Port of Savannah, from 200,000 TEUs to 1.75 million TEUs, expected to be completed by the end of 2028.

The still-to-be-built Savannah Container Terminal will be on the north bank of the Savannah River, on a 2,000-acre island, Hutchinson Island, which, prior to the 1990s, was a CSX-owned wildland of forests and wetlands.

Today, Hutchinson Island is home to the Savannah Convention Center, a Westin hotel resort and golf course, a luxury housing community, and a mixed-use development and marina. The GPA plans to build three berths for freighters to dock on a swath of land upriver from the convention center and hotel near the Talmadge Bridge.

The GPA’s largest Savannah facility, the Garden City Terminal, is 2 miles upstream from Ocean Terminal and the Savannah River Terminal site.

Savannah’s container business doubled during Lynch’s tenure. According to a University of Georgia study published in September, the GPA today generates $181 billion in annual sales and supports 605,616 jobs statewide, with facilities in Brunswick, Bainbridge, Chatsworth and Gainesville as well as in Savannah.