There were as many as 30 vessels anchored outside Savannah last September; now vessels may have a short wait to get into the harbor.
Photo credit: Jeremy Polston/Georgia Ports Authority.
The Journal of Commerce Online
Import container dwells are climbing at the Port of Savannah, but the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) says new pop-up storage sites should maintain cargo fluidity and avoid the congestion seen last fall when as many as 30 vessels were anchored outside the port.
The port is concerned that shippers are taking longer to pick up cargo after several months of declining dwell times, but it has been able to absorb the longer dwells better than last September. The backlog that developed last fall is now completely cleared.
“Thank God we have the pop-up yards because import dwells are going back toward 10 days again, which is a no-go zone for us,” GPA CEO Griff Lynch told JOC.com.
Lynch said the pop-up storage sites in Atlanta, Chatsworth, Statesboro, and Savannah have been critical to shuttling long-dwelling cargo out of the Garden City Terminal. And containers began flowing last week to a new pop-up yard in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, established with CSX Transportation.
GPA is discussing adding a sixth pop-up storage site with Norfolk Southern Railway outside of Georgia.
Lynch also credited GPA’s so-called “Peak Capacity Project,” which will add 20,000 new container slots to the Garden City Terminal by June, for eliminating the queue of vessels off Savannah. The new slots represent a nearly 25 percent increase in terminal capacity.
Five thousand container slots have been opened so far, and another 5,000 will become available between Feb. 14 and March 2….continue reading