Largest ship ever calls on Port of Savannah

SAVANNAH, GA, USA – On July 13, Georgia Ports Authority (GPA), a World Trade Center Savannah Founding Investor Partner, saw the largest ship ever to call on the Port of Savannah. The MOL vessel Benefactor has a capacity of 10,100 twenty-foot equivalent container units and is the first vessel to call Savannah through Panama Canal’s expanded locks.

In a GPA press release, Executive Director Griff Lynch commented on the event, "The arrival of the MOL Benefactor today ushers in a new era of larger vessels and services that will increase capacity, volumes and economic opportunities for Georgia and this region."

The Savannah Harbor Expansion Project (SHEP) will help accommodate the larger vessels with a deepening of the Savannah River. The project is currently 15% complete. Georgia Ports Authority is also taking strides to accommodate the larger container ships. They recently added 30 rubber-tired gantry cranes – totaling 146 machines, which is currently the most of any single container terminal in the U.S. They have also ordered eight new new-panamax cranes, which will make their total ship-to-shore crane count 30 by the year 2018.

The Port of Savannah is the largest single container terminal in North America with 9,700 feet of contiguous berth space and over 3 million ft2 of warehouse space available within 30 miles of the port. In June, the Port of Savannah was also named one of the “10 Greenest Ports in America” by Inbound Logistics magazine.

To read the full article published by the the Georgia Ports Authority, please see source below.

For additional information, please contact Kathleen Henry, Manager of Trade Services and Research at WTC Savannah, at khenry@wtcsavannah.org.