The Georgia Ports Authority Board has approved spending $127 million to build the Blue Ridge Connector, an inland rail terminal in Gainesville, Ga., linking Northeast Georgia with the Port of Savannah’s 35 global container ship services.
The future facility will open in 2026 and serve a region important for producing heavy equipment, food and forest products.
Funding for the Blue Ridge Connector is a mix of GPA internal capital and a grant from the Federal Maritime Administration of up to $46.8 million. Norfolk Southern Railway will connect the facility to GPA’s Mason Mega Rail terminal in Savannah.
Counting this latest project, GPA has invested more than $374 million in rail capacity, including the Port of Savannah’s on-dock Mason Mega Rail Terminal and the Appalachian Regional Port in Northwest Georgia. Approximately 18-20 percent of GPA’s container cargo moves by rail. The rest is handled by truck.
In a separate item, the board approved $44.5 million to build a 300,000 square-foot facility on Garden City Terminal with offices and refrigeration facilities to support U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Savannah provides the only on-port CBP inspection facility in the U.S., lowering costs and time for port customers by eliminating the need to transport cargo to an off-site inspection facility.
Last month, GPA reopened Berth 1 at Garden City Terminal to vessel traffic. The two-year renovation project now allows the dock to serve vessels in the 16,000+ TEU range. With all berths online, vessel service has returned to previous velocities, with ship queues cleared.
GPA is conducting a $262 million expansion program at the Port of Brunswick. Construction is complete on 350,000 square feet of near-dock warehousing that serves auto and machinery processing on the north side of Colonel’s Island Terminal. Three additional buildings representing 290,000 square feet and 122 acres of Roll-on/Roll-off cargo storage space are under construction on the island’s south side.
GPA maintains a two-pillar development and operations strategy, with the Port of Savannah focused on container trade and Brunswick specializing in Ro/Ro cargo.
While volume numbers have yet to be finalized for November, the Georgia Ports Authority anticipates trade of approximately 430,000 twenty-foot equivalent container units, for an 18.5 percent increase over the same month in 2019, the most recent year unaffected by the pandemic.
