Name: Port of Savannah reports slight decrease for FY2020, sets tonnage records
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Port of Savannah reports slight decrease for FY2020, sets tonnage records

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&nbsp;While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruptions at the Port of Savannah over the past few months, the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) reported only a slight decrease in container traffic during the fiscal year 2020 during their board meeting on Monday.Griff Lynch, GPA’s executive director, said the Port handled 4.44 million twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) during the FY2020, falling .9% compared to last year."If you go back four months ago I would have thought it was going to be worse, but I will say it we went another month we would have had a much larger decrease," Lynch said on a call with reporters following the meeting.Shipping volumes for the month of June fell 6.5%, Lynch said noting that the GPA had forecasted a decline of about 13% for the month. Volumes fell about 18% in March, 7% in April and 10% in May compared to the same months a year ago."The last four months really pulled us down. We went into March being up 4%, so we lost record pace in the last four months of the year," he said."I think though when you look at Savannah I believe it’s true to say that, if you look at us versus all the other major ports we probably fared the best of any other ports, even with those numbers."The GPA still managed to set a few records during the fiscal year with Lynch reporting that total tons crossing all GPA docks reached a record 37.77 million, up 0.6%, or 223,000 tons, compared to FY2019 and container tons grew 2% or 560,440 tons to reach 33.5 million tons for the year.Lynch said looking ahead to the next four weeks there are still record imports on the water, but he fears it could be short lived and the spike could be temporary. Commodities such as building materials and dollar store imports are doing well, but others like autos and auto parts are not. At the GPA’s Colonel’s Island Terminal in Brunswick, autos declined 38% year over year."There are more tales of woe right now than there are success stories, but those that are being successful are highly successful," Lynch said.Looking ahead to August and September, Lynch said there are still voided sailings on the books, but things are improving. There were initially 19 voided sailings scheduled for August, but now Lynch said the ocean carriers are calling for 12 extra loaders in August. There are 10 voided sailings scheduled for September with three extra loaders.Extra loaders are additional single vessels, which are typically deployed during strong market conditions and don’t remain on the Port of call’s regular schedule."We’re still going to be down on overall calls, but that gap is going to shrink because of these extra loaders, so the good news is that it shows there is demand at origin an the ocean carriers are stepping up," he said."The fact they’re calling in extra loaders and not re-instituting the services tells us that maybe they don’t feel it’s going to be there for the long haul."Lynch said one thing driving increases on the import side is an approaching tariff deadline of Aug. 7 that would end exclusions for some goods."Not to say that the president or the administration won’t extend those, but we do know there are some products and customers that are wanting to get their cargo here before Aug. 7 just in case," he said."If they can beat that deadline they’ll avoid significant tariffs."Lynch also reported on Monday that the first nine of 18 Mason Mega Rail tracks are now moving cargo at the Port of Savannah and two new mobile harbor cranes have been added to Savannah’s Ocean Terminal and a new container yard will be completed at Ocean Terminal by year’s end.In the works for more than four years, the Mason Mega Rail will expand service to the Southeast and Midwestern U.S. and double the Port of Savannah’s rail capacity to 2 million twenty-foot equivalent container units per year.Construction is also scheduled to start soon on the straightening of Berth 1 at Garden City Terminal to handle more 15,000-TEU vessels. GPA is also upgrading Berth 2 at Colonel’s Island in Brunswick for dedicated Roll-on/Roll-off service."We’re investing on the back end again, so that when times do get good we’re ready to go forward with those changes," said Will McKnight, GPA's board chairman.Other announcements included the arrival of 20 new rubber-tired gantry cranes, which are slated to arrive at Savannah terminals by December and three new rail-mounted gantry cranes, which scheduled to go into service by the end of FY2021.

&nbsp;While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruptions at the Port of Savannah over the past few months, the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) reported only a slight decrease in container traffic during the fiscal year 2020 during their board meeting on Monday.Griff Lynch, GPA’s executive director, said the Port handled 4.44 million twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) during the FY2020, falling .9% compared to last year."If you go back four months ago I would have thought it was going to be worse, but I will say it we went another month we would have had a much larger decrease,"...

Port of Savannah reports slight decrease for FY2020, sets tonnage records

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