SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) – The top executive over Georgia’s seaports in Savannah and Brunswick said Monday he expects another record-breaking fiscal year following a busy spring in which East Coast ports benefited from a labor dispute on the West Coast.
The Georgia Ports Authority handled 2.84 million tons of total cargo in April, a month that saw a whopping 335,900 cargo containers move through the Port of Savannah – an increase of nearly 26 percent from April 2014. That’s the most tonnage and container volume Georgia ports have ever seen in a single month, and March was almost as busy.
Curtis Foltz, the port authority’s executive director, said he’s “pretty comfortable” that the fiscal year ending June 30 will exceed milestones reached last year when annual tonnage hit a record 29 million tons and Savannah handled 3.1 million containers of imports and exports.
“A new record year for us, on top of an unbelievable year last year, it’s pretty spectacular,” Foltz said following the authority’s monthly board meeting Monday.
Georgia ports, along with others on the East Coast, got much busier this year when tense contract negotiations for West Coast dockworkers nearly closed the ports of Los Angles and Long Beach, California, as well as more than two dozen others. The dispute caused shippers to temporarily divert shipments of retail goods to the East Coast.