Savannah, Georgia, is one of my favorite places to visit. Besides the city’s storied history and picturesque riverfront, the Savannah port has quietly become one of the largest on the Eastern Seaboard.
According to the Georgia Ports Authority, Savannah now features 74.4 million square feet of industrial space covering 1,345 acres with 36 ship-to-shore cranes. The Savannah Harbor Expansion Project will deepen the river to 47 feet at low tide, and the Mason Mega Rail Terminal Project will double rail capacity to 2 million 20-foot equivalent container units or TEUs annually.
To underscore the prominence of the Savannah harbor, it was recently visited by the largest ship ever to cruise into a U.S. East Coast port. This ship, the CMA CGM Brazil, holds 15,072 TEUs.
I wish I could have been there to see this colossal ship guided by the tugboats coming down the Savannah River to make berth.
What got me thinking about Savannah’s port was the corn market news for 2020. Nearly one-third of the global corn market is supplied by the Unites States, and it is good news that China is again booking corn purchases because of tight supplies there.
Here in the United States, a recovering economy with plants reopening and travel returning to a more normal level will help with domestic sales. We just need good harvest weather to bring in crop to fulfill those needs.