The Port of Savannah received four collossal new electric ship-to-shore cranes on Saturday, bringing its total to eight and soon enabling the Georgia facility’s Ocean Terminal to service two vessels simultaneously.
The Super Post Panamax cranes were all designed by Finland-based Konecranes. The specific manufacturer of the cranes is significant in an era where U.S. security agencies have warned in recent months that the Chinese-made cranes currently installed at most U.S. cargo ports pose cybersecurity and espionage risks if hackers tapped into their networked sensors to monitor details of cargo port operations.
The new cranes are part of the latest upgrades to the Port of Savannah’s Ocean Terminal, which is currently in a renovation phase, although freight operations have continued throughout the work. Another one of those upgrades is a $29 million exit ramp running from the terminal directly to local highways, allowing trucks direct highway transit to Atlanta without any traffic lights until entering Atlanta. The ramp project is 60% complete and is designed with the local community in mind to keep container trucks off local neighborhood roads.
"The completion of this project in 2028 will enable Ocean Terminal to accommodate the largest vessels serving the U.S. East Coast," Ed McCarthy, Chief Operating Officer of Georgia Ports, said in a release. "Our goal is to ensure customers have the future berth capacity for their larger vessels’ first port of calls with the fastest U.S. inland connectivity to compete in world markets."
"We want our ocean carrier customers to see us as the port they can bring their ships and make up valuable time in their sailing schedule using our big ship berths. Our crane productivity and 24-hour rail transit to inland markets is industry-leading," Susan Gardner, Vice President of Operations at Georgia Ports, said.
