SAVANNAH — Casting the Port of Savannah as a future “national gateway” for maritime trade, Georgia Ports Authority CEO Griff Lynch on Thursday vowed to be “all in” on infrastructure investments during the annual Savannah State of the Port address.
Speaking to a packed ballroom at the Savannah Convention Center, Lynch walked attendees through $2 billion worth of changes to the nation’s third largest port. These include projects to add berths for bigger vessels, an overhaul of an older terminal to handle more containers and a future effort to raise the Talmadge Bridge in partnership with the Georgia Department of Transportation.
Many of those improvements are already underway and are meant to position the Port of Savannah to capitalize on a shift in international trade toward U.S. East Coast ports.
“Decisions you make today determine who you will be tomorrow,” Lynch said. “We intend to transform the port.”
Lynch did not mention the ports authority’s push for a river deepening and widening study during his remarks, instead addressing the issue in a news conference following the event.
Lynch recently acknowledged the ports authority is seeking authorization from Congress to research another round of dredging. The last deepening finished in March 2022, 25 years after it started. Maritime trade evolved dramatically over that quarter century, Lynch said, and more changes to the shipping channel are needed for Savannah to stay competitive.
“The ships are a lot larger now. The size of ship that wants to come to the U.S. is basically in the 20,000 to 22,000 TEU range,” Lynch said, using an acronym for 20-foot-equivalent units, a common industry metric. “That needs to be studied. We need that to happen but it’s the beginning of the process, not the end.”
The Port of Savannah and other ports authority facilities support 561,000 jobs and contribute $59 billion annually to the state’s gross domestic product, a study by the University of Georgia showed.
State elected leaders lauded the port’s success. House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican who represents a district just upriver from the Port of Savannah, called the Savannah River the “lifeblood” of the local and state economies and said continued infrastructure investment is important “to keep the port thriving.”
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, speaking via videotaped remarks, voiced support for the port and its intention to “grow even faster in the future.”
Savannah’s container business has nearly doubled over the last decade as the Panama Canal was expanded to allow for bigger ships and sparked a move away from West Coast ports. Savannah and other East Coast and Gulf Coast ports now handle 56% of U.S. container traffic, up from 44% in 2003. Most of that growth has happened since the canal expansion’s completion in 2016.
Maritime trade experts expect Atlantic ports such as Savannah to expand their dominance in the years ahead. West Asian nations such as India, Thailand and Vietnam now compete with China in goods manufacturing, and trade routes from those countries bring ships to the East Coast via Egypt’s Suez Canal. The Suez is significantly wider than the Panama Canal — meaning much larger vessels carrying thousands more boxes can transit the Suez compared to Panama.
According to Lynch, shippers can move containers from India to Savannah five days quicker than they can from India to Los Angeles/Long Beach.
Lynch said Savannah’s North American container market share, now at 11%, is projected to grow as the port doubles its container capacity over the next seven years — so long as the port “prepares for the future.” Savannah set a record for container traffic in Fiscal Year 2022; Fiscal Year 2023 was the second busiest year in port history.
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Project ramping up
The Port of Savannah is in the midst of a long-term redevelopment plan that began in 2018 with construction of the Mason Mega Rail, an on-terminal transfer facility for rail traffic. The port has also reconfigured its largest ship berth and started the transformation of Ocean Terminal, one of two in the Port of Savannah, from a facility focused on roll-on, roll-off cargo such as cars and heavy equipment as well as “breakbulk cargo,” or goods that do not fit in shipping containers, to one that handles containers exclusively.
Elevating the roadway of the Talmadge suspension bridge, which spans the Savannah River near downtown, is next. Plans call for the replacement of the suspension cables and a raising of the vehicle traffic lanes to allow more clearance underneath for ships. Lynch showed an animation of the bridge changes during Thursday’s event and said ships carrying up to 22,000 containers will be able to pass beneath the Talmadge once the project is completed in 2026.
The Talmadge’s reopening is to correspond with construction of a new container terminal to be located at the bridge’s northern foot. The ports authority in September submitted a permit application for the Hutchinson Island Terminal to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Work is to begin in 2026 and finish in 2030.
Credit: AJC file photo
Credit: AJC file photo
As for the proposed deepening and widening of the Savannah River channel, officials have petitioned Congress to include a study into altering the river bottom as part of the reauthorization of the Water Resources Development Act. The legislation is up for renewal in 2024.
Should the study be approved, digging a wider, deeper shipping lane would take a decade.
Ports are a big business
The port has helped drive the economic surge Savannah has enjoyed since the end of the Great Recession, reflecting a broader trend. A study in 2014 estimated that every 10% increase in the capacity of a port generates an expansion of between 6% and 20% in the economy of the region it serves. Ports that are efficient and which connect to well-run logistics on the ground have the higher impact.
A port has an impact in a number of ways. The most direct is job creation. Thousands of workers are needed to load and unload ships, transfer containers and other shipments to trucks and cart them inland to distribution and other locations.
Many of those jobs in American ports are well-paid union positions. Some of those are especially well-paid, high-skill jobs, like crane operators. And virtually all those workers spend those paychecks on goods and services in the local economy, adding to its strength.
Imports make it to American consumers and companies, and the more efficient the port is, the cheaper the goods are for the end user.
Exports are carried from American factories to customers overseas, so the smoother that process, the better for American manufacturing and American workers.
Editor’s note: The story has been updated to correct a comparison of the amount of time it takes to ship containers from India to Savannah compared to a transit from India to the Los Angeles/Long Beach ports.
Top 10 US ports, by number of containers handled (2022)
| Los Angeles | 10.7 million |
| New Jersey, New York | 9.5 million |
| Long Beach | 9.1 million |
| Savannah | 5.9 million |
| Houston | 4 million |
| Norfolk | 3.7 million |
| Seattle | 3.4 million |
| Charleston | 2.9 million |
| Oakland | 2.3 million |
| Miami | 1.2 million |
Source: Container xChange
