The GeorgiaPorts Authority, which was founded in 1945, operates port facilities in the U.S. state of Georgia. Georgia's primary deepwater ports are located in Savannah and Brunswick, supplemented by an inland container transload facility.
Garden City Terminal is the fourth-busiest container handling facility in the United States, encompassing more than 1,200 acres and moving millions of tons of containerized cargo annually.
Ocean Terminal, Savannah's dedicated breakbulk and roll-on/roll-off facility, covers 200.4 acres and has more than 1.4 million square feet of covered storage.
The Port of Brunswick includes three GPA-owned deepwater terminals, two of which are directly operated by the GPA.
Colonel's Island Terminal has three roll-on/roll-off berths and four on-terminal auto processors, handling cargo for more than 60 auto and heavy machinery manufacturers. The terminal is also home to a bulk export/import operation.
Mayor's Point Terminal specializes in handling forest products, while Marine Port Terminals, operated by Logistec U.S.A., specializes in the handling of breakbulk and bulk commodities
Georgia Ports Authority opened the Appalachian Regional Port, a container truck-to-rail transload facility in Murray County, Georgia, in August 2018. The inland port serves additional markets in Alabama and Tennessee and is connected to the Port of Savannah by a 388-mile railroad route.
Economic impact
According to a report from the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, Georgia's ports supported 439,220 full- and part-time jobs throughout Georgia as of 2017, or about 9 percent of total state employment, with personal income of about $25 billion. According to the report, port activity accounted for about $106 billion in statewide sales. Tax revenue stemming from port trade totaled $5.9 billion in federal taxes, $1.4 billion in state taxes, and $1.5 billion in local taxes.
Savannah Harbor Expansion Project
The Savannah Harbor Expansion Project is an in-progress dredging program to deepen the harbor from 42 feet to 47 feet. The depth will allow large ships that are coming through the Panama Canal to call on the Port of Savannah. While some of these Neo-Panamax ships already call Savannah, they are not loaded to capacity. As of February 2018, the project, which began in 2015, was about halfway completed. The remaining work is expected to be finished by 2021, and will allow loaded ships to transport about 3,600 additional cargo containers through the harbor on each passage. The project is estimated to cost a total of about $973 million, of which 75% is provided by the federal government, with the remainder from the state of Georgia. In September 2018, Savannah Now reported that officials thought the Talmadge Bridge may need to be replaced if the port was to service Neo-Panamax vessels.
