SAVANNAH, GA – The port of Savannah is currently surging with a new shipping market and rising imports.  This port city trails New York City as the No. 2 East Coast container port and ranks No. 4 nationally, according to Bloomberg.  Ongoing improvements at the port are continuing to push it forward.

“Not only have we been the fastest-growing port in the U.S. for a decade now,” Curtis Foltz, Executive Director of the Georgia Ports Authority, said at the organization’s annual meeting in September. “But we’re now in a position to grow and become No. 1. Something that was unfathomable a decade ago is something that is at least within our sight.”

Supporting that statement, Bloomberg reports that the Port of Savannah’s September imports rose 21.7% compared to a 7% increase for New York.  That being said however, New York still imported nearly twice the cargo.

“It has been widely accepted and time-tested that ships will always move large cargo volumes through New York because of its massive consuming population,” Stan Payne, the former head of the Canaveral Port Authority in Florida and now a shipping consultant, said in an e-mail to Bloomberg. “In the end, if Savannah does overtake New York and New Jersey, and it certainly is within the realm of reasonable possibility, then it will do so because of focus and a political and operating structure that provides it the control to turn that focus into results.”

One of the large selling points for Savannah is the port’s proximity to major expressways like I20 and I95.  The port is currently working to deepen its waters to attract larger ships that may come through the expanded Panama Canal as well, according to Bloomberg.

With all of these changes in progress, it will be interesting to see how far the Port of Savannah will grow.  Stay tuned to AndNowUKnow for the latest updates.