Georgia’s ports notched another record year of imports and exports in 2015, but this year doesn’t look as promising.
Cargo traffic through Savannah soared 11.7 percent from the 2014 calendar year as stevedores moved 3.7 million containers, the Georgia Ports Authority reported Monday.
“The expansion was fueled in part by heightened demand in the U.S. Southeast,” GPA Executive Director Curtis Foltz said in a statement, “and cargo diverted from the West Coast.”
2016, though, is looking decidedly bleaker for Georgia exports. Blame China — the port's major trading partner — and a strong dollar. Exports to China through Savannah are down one-third from a year ago and the port, as well as various Georgia industries, braces for more pain.
After years of growth, sometimes logged in double digits, total exports from Savannah are likely to drop 2 percent this year, GPA officials told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently. They rose 9 percent the last fiscal year.
The ports of Savannah and Brunswick account for nearly $40 billion in statewide economic impact and tens of thousands of jobs, according to a University of Georgia study. Metro Atlanta — a logistics hub for the Southeast — reaps roughly 70 percent of the ports' economic benefit.
2016 might be Savannah's worst trade year since the Great Recession, when consumer demand all but died.
“When China, the second largest economy in the world, catches a cold, everyone else is going to feel it,” Foltz said in a recent interview. “Whether it’s forest products, kaolin clay, agricultural products or chemicals, they’re all going to suffer.”
GPA also approved Monday spending $47 million to buy four, huge ship-to-shore cranes for Savannah’s port. By 2018, the port will tally 30 mega-cranes capable of lifting 72 tons from ever-larger container ships expected to call on Savannah once expansion of the Panama Canal is finished sometime this year.
The GPA board also agreed Monday to spend an additional $8.2 million to add depot space for empty containers. Last year a whopping 667,000 empty containers were exported from Savannah —- half of all outbound containers. That was a one-third increase over the previous year.
“The GPA is maintaining capacity ahead of demand to ensure efficient cargo movement,” chairman James Walters said in a statement.
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