Port of Savannah ships in another good year as Charleston works to catchup

Flickr user Dr. Jaus
TEU containers doing their thing.

With the fiscal year having recently ended, on Thursday the Georgia Ports Authority held an upbeat State of the Ports Address.

In all the authority saw records for total tonnage, containers, and autos.

"Strong growth in break-bulk and auto cargoes complemented record volumes in total tonnage and container traffic," said Executive Director Curtis J. Foltz. 

At the Port of Savannah 2,982,467 TEU containers were moved, that's 1.9 percent growth over FY2011 for 55,221 more containers.

The news comes as a a political battle plays out over the deepening of water channels for the next generation of mega cargo ships, and the once leading Port of Charleston continues to lag behind. 

For its part, the Port of Charleston leaders announced an investment plan of $1.3 billion over the next 10 years.

It also said that this August it was one of the fastest-growing top 10 U.S. container ports for the first six months of 2012, seeing container volume grow by 7.4%. Still, for the whole fiscal year the port was up only 3.5%, handling 1.43 million TEU containers.

That's only half as busy as the Port of Savannah.

The Charleston ports also saw break-bulk volumes grow 21%, with 863,471 tons being handled.

Meanwhile a long promised bi-state Jasper County port remains largely on hold.

Filed in