Rarely does the port of Savannah — one of the state’s major economic engines — do less business than the year before. Last year, though, was the third time in 15 years that fewer containers passed through the Garden City Terminal.
The Georgia Ports Authority announced Monday that 3.6 million steel shipping boxes flowed into and out of the state’s major port. A year earlier, 3.7 million containers did.
The 1.3 percent decline in container volume is nearly unheard of at the bustling port of Savannnah — the nation’s fourth busiest container port and second only to the port of New York-New Jersey on the East Coast.
Ports’ officials blamed exports, due to a strong dollar and a slackening global economy, for the decline.
“Overall, FY16 container volumes exceeded expectations,” Griff Lynch, the ports authority’s executive director, said in a statement. “Import loads were actually up 3.5 percent signaling a high degree of diverted cargo retention, along with a stronger consumer index, perhaps related to stronger consumer confidence.”
Indeed, the previous year’s import surge was due largely to a West Coast strike which led shippers and retailers to shift deliveries to the East Coast. Savannah benefitted greatly.
Most of that diverted business, though, returned to the West Coast once the strike ended. The ports authority estimates that one-fourth of the new business, or 75,000 containers, stayed in Savannah.
“This coming year,” Lynch added, “we will be focused on increasing our capacity, expanding our reach into new markets and providing superior supply chain solutions for our customers.”
Year-to-year container business has declined only three times over the last 15 years. There was a slight drop-off in business in fiscal 2013 when Garden City handled about 30,000 fewer containers than the year before.
In 2009, due to the Great Recession, Savannah handled only 2.4 million containers. Garden City, the year before, did 2.7 million containers.
In other business, the ports authority board approved $20 million to build the Appalachian Regional Port near Chatsworth in north Georgia. The so-called inland port, opposed by many Murray County residents who fear too much truck and train traffic and the marring of a lovely valley near the Tennessee border, is scheduled to be completed in mid-2018.
