U.S. East Coast port Savannah increases it[ds_preview]s efforts to achieve the status of a major gateway. Now a significant land area has been sold for logistics and industry purposes.
The Georgia Ports Authority announced the sale of 500 acres of property for commercial development to accommodate growing customer demand for warehousing, distribution and transload facilities near the Port of Savannah. The new development, located on five parcels of land at GPA‘s Savannah River International Trade Park, is less than five miles from the Garden City Container Terminal and can accommodate up to 5 million square feet of logistics space.
»Today‘s announcement will help further establish Savannah as a gateway port for the U.S. Southeast and beyond,« said Executive Director Griff Lynch. »With an increased demand for reliable, cost-effective logistics opportunities, this development is another example of GPA‘s focus on supply chain solutions for our customers.«
According to the announcement, the project is just one mile from I-95 and »will help fill a growing need to service a larger range of customers from the Southeast to the Midwest U.S.«
In the meantime, for January it was reported that the month was the third in a row of record performances at the Savannah container port, with the Authority moving 331,190 twenty-foot equivalent container units, an improvement of 16.1 % (45,889 TEUs). The GPA reported for the month of November a 5.8 % increase in container traffic, reaching 300,671 TEUs. In December, the Port of Savannah handled 292,172 TEUs, a 12.3 % increase over December 2015.
»The expansion we‘re seeing in our container volumes constitutes a strong vote of confidence from our new and longtime port customers,« said GPA Board Chairman Jimmy Allgood. »Keeping ahead of demand requires infrastructure development in both the public and private sector. The new facilities destined for our trade park are part of that equation. The GPA is also making the on-terminal improvements necessary to stay ahead of demand.«
More efforts at Savannah
Other efforts to increase capacity at the Georgia Ports Authority include for example a rail expansion project at Garden City Terminal, which is supposed to double the rail lift capacity to 1 million containers per year. The $128 million project is supposed to make routes running deeper into the American Midwest.
The Port of Savannah handled 8.2 %Â of the U.S. containerized cargo volume and 10.3 %Â of all U.S. containerized exports in 2015.
