GPA fiscal year volume slips 10.5%
The Georgia Ports Authority said Monday its container throughput declined 10.5 percent in the fiscal year 2009, but that the port remained the nation's fourth-largest container port with 2.4 million TEUs handled.
Tonnage at GPA terminals, which include those at Bainbridge, Brunswick, Columbus and Savannah, fell 12.4 percent.
The decline in containerized trade at Georgia ports was far less than the 30 percent decline in container volume for the United States as a whole during the first six months of 2009.
'We continued to make gains with our international carriers despite the global economic crisis,' said Doug J. Marchand, the port authority's executive director. 'In the past six months, 11 new or reconfigured services have started calling on the Port of Savannah. Two of these services, SAE and CAGEMA, have opened the doors for new markets for Georgia's products in the Caribbean and Central America.'
In the last fiscal year GPA said it purchased four additional super post-Panamax cranes and 15 rubber-tired gantry cranes and completed construction of the Chatham Intermodal Container Transfer Facility, which makes the Port of Savannah the only single facility on the U.S. East Coast with two on-terminal ICTFs, and an upgrade of two container berths and three container yards to create additional capacity.